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ALONG 
THE HUDSON 

WITH 
WASHINGTON 

IRVING 



WALLACE BRUCE 



ALONG 
THE HUDSON 

WITH 
WASHINGTON 

IRVING 



By WALLACE BRUCE 



PRESS OF THE A. V. HAIGHT COMPANY 
POUGHKEEPSIE, N. Y. 



$1 



Copyright 1913 
by Wallace Bruce 



IED FROM 
IQHT OFFIOI 

OAAi 7 ' /$//, 



A World-wide Welcome 



Hail stalely ship of worthy name! 

Where cherished memories fondly brood, 
Proclaiming wide our Hudson's fame; 

Ay more; a world-wide Brotherhood. 
With hearty cheer we welcome thee, 

Washington Irving' s flag unfurled. 
Whose genius rules from sea to sea 

Whose love enriches all the world. 

Ring happy bells! Manhattan greet 

Our "Irving" at thy portal now; 
No other name so fair and meet, 

Your storied record to endow. 
Ring joyous bells along the way! 

Swing icide and far a welcome free! 
The glorious Hudson wakes today 

With grateful music all for tliee. 

Hail! "Irving" Hail! no name but thine 

Could blend and bind such memories true; 
Through him long centuries entwine 

The Highlands bold and Catskills blue. 
From Sunny side to mountain stream 

Where "Laughing Water" gently plays 
Let bells salute Van Winkle's dream 

And crown the land with laurel bays. 



CONTENTS 

Along the Hudson 5 

Irving's First Voyage by Sloop in 1800 . 9 

His Account of Hendrick Hudson's Dis- 
covery 13 

Peter Stuyvesant's Journey . ... 29 

Patroon Van Rensellear's Trip from New 

York to Albany 37 

Anthony Van Corlear Diplomatic Mission 99 

Oloffe Van Kortland's Dream ... 42 

Legend of Sleepy Hollow . ... 44 

Rip Van Winkle 78 

Sunnyside — The Home of Many Mem- 
ories 109 

The Dreamland of Pocantico and Sleepy 

Hollow 114 

Washington Irving at Home and Abroad 117 



Along the Hudson 
With Washington Irving 



Through a Realm of Beauty, Romance 
and History with our sweetest 
writer and noblest voyager 

For many years it has been the delight of 
our Hudson River dwellers and of all world- 
wide readers in every state and in many lands, 
to make delightful excursions of fancy "Along 
the Hudson with Washington Irving." It 
was, therefore, a beautiful thought of the 
Hudson River Day Line to convert this fancy 
into fact and to make our journeys "Along 
the Hudson with Washington Irving, "a de- 
lightful reality by the launching of a noble 
steamer bearing our illustrious writer's name, 
so that we all become today real voyagers with 
him, and as it were, personally conducted 
among the mountains, valleys and streams, 
illuminated and glorified by his sunny genius 
and eventful life. 

5 



It was also a splendid idea of the Hudson 
River Day Line management to construct and 
name their three superb steamers in natural 
and historic sequence as related to the river, 
to wit: 

"Hendrick Hudson" — Our Discoverer. 

"Robert Fulton" — Our Inventor. 

"Washington Irving" — Our Portray er and 
Voyager. 

From Washington Irving's much loved 
Manhattan to the historic Highlands and the 
romantic Catskills, the very breezes are vo- 
cal with his utterances, and we esteem it a 
great privilege by the mere crossing of a poetic 
"gang-plank of memory" to pass at once from 
Dreamland to Reality and thereby spend a 
delightful day in his companionship and listen 
to his cheery words which still flow sweetly 
from his own lips as he recounts to us the ro- 
mance and story of our noble River. 

"I thank God," exclaims Washington Irving 
"that I was born on the banks of the Hudson, 
for I fancy I can trace much that is good and 
pleasant in my heterogeneous compound to my 
early companionship with this glorious river. 

It will be remembered that a short walk from 
his Birthplace, 119 William St., would take 
the active lad in three or four minutes through 
the old Trinity churchyard or across open 

6 



fields from his very doorstep to the bank of 
the river; so that all Manhattan was in fact 
his dooryard and the entire valley of the 
Hudson his dream land. It may now also 
be fittingly recalled that Washington Irving 
seemed especially foreordained by ancestry, 
home and association for the noble mission 
that awaited him. On his eventful birthday 
April 5, 1783, his patriotic mother said to his 
father "General Washington's great work is 
now completed and we will call our little boy 
Washington Irving." The worthy woman who 
had distributed food to the starving soldiers 
of the American Revolution cruelly confined 
in the loathsome British Prison ships of New 
York divined the right name for her little boy 
in the cradle; this happy christening led to 
an early and memorable meeting of the dis- 
tinguished General and his little namesake, 
for Washington Irving now tells us how 

"A young Scotch maid servant of the fam- 
ily, struck with the enthusiasm which every- 
where greeted General Washington's arrival 
in New York, determined to present the child 
to his distinguished namesake. Accordingly 
she followed him one morning and leading by 
the hand the lad who had scarce outgrown his 
virgin trousers, said "Please, your honor, 
here's a bairn was named after you." In the 



estimation of Lizzie, for so she was called, 
few claims of kindred could be stronger than 
this. Washington did not disdain the delicate 
affinity, and placing his hand on the head of 
her little charge, gave him his blessing." 

The distinguished hero of Yorktown and 
the first President of our Republic little 
dreamed that the good Scotch nurse led by the 
hand that morning one destined to laurel his 
own history, to depict the great deeds of the 
Revolutionary struggle and to transmit, as 
it were, by personal touch, a work which in 
reverent love and sympathetic narration would 
stand alone, not only in American literature, 
but also in the annals of the world's history of 
freedom. 

Were I an artist I know of no finer group in 
our entire American story than this of the 
great General and the bright eyed lad at- 
tended by his nurse in her Tartan plaid stand- 
ing at the doorway of the old Trinity Church 
appropriately framed amid the old-time pic- 
turesque buildings of the lower Broadway of 
our Revolutionary days. That greeting and 
blessing was a "laying on of hands" never to 
be forgotten and a noble dedication for the 
great work the lad was to accomplish. 



Irving's First Voyage 



As the steamer lines are cast off at Des- 

brosses Street pier, Washington Irving 

naturally reverts to the old-time 

days, and his great voyage 

Along the Hudson 

by sloop in 1800 



My first voyage up the Hudson was made 
in early boyhood, before steamboats and rail- 
roads had annihilated time and space. A 
voyage to Albany then was equal to a voyage 
to Europe at present, and took almost as much 
time. \^,e enjoyed the beauties of the river 
in those days; the features of nature were no 
all iumbled together, nor the towns and vil- 
lages huddled one into the other by railroad 
speed as they are now. 

I was to make the voyage under the pro- 
tection of a relative of mature age; one ex- 
perienced in the river. His first care was to 
look out for a favorite sloop and captain, in 
which there was great choice. 



The constant voyaging in the river craft by 
the best families of New York and Albany made 
the merits of captains and sloops matters of 
notoriety and discussion in both cities. The 
captains were mediums of communication be- 
tween separated friends and families. On the 
arrival of one of them at either place he had 
messages to deliver and commissions to exe- 
cute which took him from house to house. 
Some of the ladies of the family had, perad- 
venture, made a voyage on board of his sloop, 
and experienced from him that protecting care 
which is always remembered with gratitude 
by female passengers. In this way the cap- 
tains of Albany sloops were personages of 
more note in the community than captains of 
European packets or steamships at the present 
day. A sloop was at length chosen; but she 
had to complete her freight and secure a suf- 
ficient number of passengers. Days were con- 
sumed in "drumming up" a cargo. This was 
a tormenting delay to me who was about to 
make my first voyage, and who, boy-like had 
packed up my trunk on the first mention of the 
expedition. How often that trunk had to be 
unpacked and repacked before we sailed 

What a time of intense delight was that 
first sail through the Highlands! I sat on the 
deck as we slowly tided along at the foot of 

10 



those stern mountains, and gazed with wonder 
and admiration at cliffs impending far above 
me, crowned with forests, with eagles sailing 
and screaming around them; or listened to 
the unseen stream dashing down precipices 
or beheld rock, and tree, and cloud, and sky 
reflected in the glassy stream of the river. And 
then how solemn and thrilling the scene as we 
anchored at night at the foot of these moun- 
tains, clothed with overhanging forests; and 
everything grew dark and mysterious; and 
I heard the plaintive note of the whippoor- 
will from the mountain-side, or was startled 
now and then by the sudden leap and heavy 
splash of the sturgeon. 

But of all the scenery of the Hudson, the 
Kaatskill Mountains had the most witching 
effect on my boyish imagination. Never 
shall I forget the effect upon me of the first 
view of them predominating over a wide ex- 
tent of country, part wild, woody, and rugged 
part softened away into all the graces of cul- 
tivation. As we slowly floated along, I lay 
on the deck and watched them through a long 
summer's day; undergoing a thousand muta- 
tions under the magical effects of atmosphere 
sometimes seeming to approach; at other 
times to recede; now almost melting into hazy 
distance, now burnished by the setting sun, 

11 



until, in the evening, they printed themselves 
against the glowing sky in the deep purple of 
an Italian landscape. 

"I am here recalling my first voyaging amid 
Hudson scenery and can say that it has been 
my lot, in the course of a somewhat wander- 
ing life, to behold some of the rivers of the old 
world, most renowned in history and song, 
yet none have been able to efface or dim the 
pictures of my native stream thus early stamp- 
ed upon my memory. My heart would ever 
revert to them with a filial feeling, and a re- 
currence of the joyous associations of boy- 
hood; and such recollections are, in fact, the 
true fountains of youth which keep the heart 
from growing old. 

To me the Hudson is full of storied associa- 
tions, connected as it is with some of the hap- 
piest portions of my life. Each striking fea- 
ture brings to mind some early adventure or 
enjoyment; some favorite companion who 
shared it with me; some fair object, perchance, 
of youthful admiration, who, like a star, 
may have beamed her allotted time and passed 
away. 



l% 



Washington Irving 



Now proceeds to give us his account of 
"Hendrick Hudson's Discovery of Our 
River." After refreshing his mem- 
ory with a hasty glance at the 
early pages of Old Knick- 
erbocker's History of 
New York 



In the ever-memorable year of our Lord, 
1609, on a Saturday morning, the five:and- 
twentieth day of March, old style, did that 
"worthy and irrecoverable discoverer (as he 
has justly been called), Master Hudson," set 
sail from Holland in a stout vessel called the 
"Half-Moon," being employed by the Dutch 
East India Company, to seek a northwest 
passage to China. 

Henry (or, as the Dutch historians call him, 
Hendrick) Hudson was a seafaring man of 
renown, who had learned to smoke tobacco 

13 



under Sir Walter Raleigh, and is said to have 
been the first to introduce it into Holland, 
which gained him much popularity in that 
country, and caused him to find great favor 
in the eyes of their High Mightinesses, the 
Lords States General, and also of the honorable 
West India Company. He was a short, square, 
brawny old gentleman, with a double chin, a 
mastiff mouth, and a broad copper nose, 
which was supposed in those days to have ac- 
quired its fiery hue from the constant neigh- 
borhood of his tobacco pipe. 

He wore a true Andrea Ferrara, tucked in a 
leathern belt, and a commodore's cocked hat 
on one side of his head. He was remarkable 
for always jerking up his breeches when he 
gave out his orders, and his voice sounded not 
unlike the brattling of a tin trumpet, — owing 
to the number of hard northwesters which he 
had swallowed in the course of his seafaring. 

Such was Hendrick Hudson, of whom we 
have heard so much, and know so little; and 
I have been thus particular in his description 
for the benefit of modern painters and statu- 
aries, that they may represent him as he was, 
— and not, according to their common custom 
with modern heroes, make him look like Ceas- 
ar, or Marcus Aurelius, or the Apollo of Bel- 
videre. 

14 



Robert Juet was an old comrade and early 
schoolmate of the great Hudson, with whom 
he had often played truant and sailed chip 
boats in a neighboring pond, when they were 
little boys: from whence it is said that the 
commodore first derived his bias towards a 
seafaring life. 

To this universal genius are we indebted for 
many particulars concerning this voyage; of 
which he wrote a history, at the request of the 
commodore, who had an unconquerable aver- 
sion to writing himself, from having received 
so many floggings about it when at school. 
To supply the deficiencies of master Juet's 
journal, which is written with true log-book 
brevity, I have availed myself of divers family 
traditions, handed down from my great-great- 
grandfather, who accompanied the expedition 
in the capacity of cabin-boy. From all that 
I can learn, few incidents worthy of remark 
happened in the voyage. 

Suffice it to say, the voyage was prosperous 
and tranquil; the crew, being a patient people, 
much given to slumber and vacuity, and but 
little troubled with the disease of thinking, — 
a malady of the mind, which is the sure breed- 
er of discontent, every man was allowed to 
sleep quietly at his post unless the wind blew. 
True, it is, some slight disaffection was shown 

15 



on two or three occasions, at certain unreas- 
onable conduct of Commodore Hudson. Thus, 
for instance, he forbore to shorten sail when 
the wind was light, and the weather serene, 
which was considered among the most expe- 
rienced Dutch seamen as certain weather- 
breeders, or prognostics that the weather 
would change for the worse. He likewise 
prohibited the seamen from wearing more than 
five jackets and six pair of breeches, under pre- 
tense of rendering them more alert; and no 
man was permitted to go aloft and hand in sails 
with a pipe in his mouth, as is the invariable 
Dutch custom at the present day. All these 
grievances, though they might ruffle for a 
moment the constitutional tranquillity of the 
honest Dutch tars, made but transient im- 
pression; — they ate hugely and slept immeas- 
urably; and being under the especial guidance 
of Providence, the ship was safely conducted 
to the coast of America; where, after sundry 
unimportant touchings and standings off and 
on, she at length, on the fourth day of Septem- 
ber, entered that majestic bay which at this 
day expands its ample bosom before the city 
of New York, and which had never before 
been visited by any European. 

True it is — and I am not ignorant of the 
fact — that in a certain apocryphal book of 

16 



voyages, compiled by one Hakluyt, is to be 
found a letter written to Francis the First, 
by one Giovanna, or John Verazzani, on 
which some writers are inclined to found a be- 
lief that this delightful bay had been visited 
nearly a century previous to the voyage of the 
enterprising Hudson. Now this (albeit it has 
met with the countenance of certain very ju- 
dicious and learned men) I hold in utter dis- 
belief, and that for various good and substan- 
tial reasons: First, Because on strict exami- 
nation it will be found that the description 
given by this Verazzani applies about as well 
to the bay of New York as it does to my night- 
cap. Secondly, because that this John Ver- 
azzani, for whom I already begin to feel a 
most bitter enmity, is a native of Florence; 
and everybody knows the crafty wiles of these 
losel Florentines, by which they filched away 
the laurels from the brows of the immortal 
Colon (vulgarly called Columbus), and be- 
stowed them on their officious townsman, 
Amerigo Vespucci; and I make no doubt they 
are equally ready to rob the illustrious Hud- 
son of the credit of discovering this beautiful 
island, adorned by the city of New York, 
and placing it beside their usurped discovery 
of South America. And thirdly, I award 
my decision in favor of the pretensions of 

17 



Hendrick Hudson, inasmuch as his expedition 
sailed from Holland, being truly and absolute- 
ly a Dutch enterprise; — and though all the 
proofs in the world were introduced on the 
other side, I would set them at naught, as 
undeserving my attention. If these three 
reasons be not sufficient to satisfy every burgher 
of this ancient city, all I can say is, they are 
degenerate descendants from their venerable 
Dutch ancestors, and totally unworthy the 
trouble of convincing. Thus, therefore, the 
title of Hendrick Hudson to his renowned dis- 
covery is fully vindicated. 

It has been traditionary in our family, that 
when the great navigator was first blessed 
with a view of this enchanting island, he was 
observed, for the first and only time in his 
life, to exhibit strong symptons of astonish- 
ment and admiration. He is said to have turn- 
ed to Master Juet, and uttered these remark- 
able words, while he pointed towards this par- 
adise of the new world, — "See! there!" — and, 
thereupon, as was always his way when he was 
uncommonly pleased, he did puff out such 
clouds of dense tobacco smoke, that in one 
minute the vessel was out of sight of land, 
and master Juet was fain to wait until the 
winds dispersed this impenetrable fog. 

It was indeed, — as my great-grandfather 

18 



used to say, — though in truth I never heard 
him, for he died, as might be expected be- 
fore I was born — "It was indeed a spot on 
which the eye might have revelled forever, in 
ever new and never-ending beauties." The 
island of Mannahata spread wide before them, 
like some sweet vision of fancy, or some fair 
creation of industrious magic. Its hills of 
smiling green swelled gently one above an- 
other, crowned with lofty trees of luxuriant 
growth; some pointing their tapering foliage 
towards the clouds, which were gloriously 
transparent; and others loaded with verdant 
burden of clambering vines, bowing their 
branches to the earth, that was covered with 
flowers. On the gentle declivities of the hills 
were scattered in gay profusion, the dogwood, 
the sumach, and the wild brier, whose scarlet 
berries and white blossoms glowed brightly 
among the deep green of the surrounding fol- 
iage; and here and there a curling column 
of smoke, rising from the little glens that op- 
ened along the shore, seemed to promise the 
weary voyagers a welcome at the hands of 
their fellow-creatures. As they stood gazing 
with entranced attention on the scene before 
them, a red man, crowned with feathers, is- 
sued from one of these glens, and after con- 
templating in wonder the gallant ship, as she 

19 



sat like a stately swan swimming on a silver 
lake, sounded the war-whoop, and bounded 
into the woods like a wild deer, to the utter as- 
tonishment of the phlegmatic Dutchmen, who 
had never heard such a noise, or witnessed 
such a caper in their whole lives. 

Of the transactions of our adventurers with 
the savages, and how the latter smoked copper 
pipes and ate dried currants; how they 
brought great store of tobacco and oysters; 
how they shot one of the ship's crew, and how 
he was buried, I shall say nothing; being that 
I consider them unimportant to my history. 
After tarrying a few days in the bay, in order 
to refresh themselves after their seafaring, 
our voyagers weighed anchor, to explore a 
mighty river which emptied into the bay. 
This river, it is said, was known among the 
savages by the name of the Shatemuch, 
though we are assured in an excellent little 
history published in 1674, by John Josselyn, 
Gent, that it was called the Mohegan, and 
master Richard Bloome, who wrote some time 
afterwards, asserts the same, — so that I very 
much incline in favor of the opinion of these 
two honest gentlemen. This river is likewise 
laid down in Ogilby's map as Manhattan 
— Noordt Montaigne and Mauritius river. 
Be this as it may, up this river did the 

20 



adventurous Hendrick proceed, little doubting 
but it would turn out to be the much looked- 
for passage to China! 

The journal goes on to make mention of 
divers interviews between the crew and the 
natives in the voyage up the river; but as 
they would be impertinent to my history, I 
shall pass them over in silence, except the 
following dry joke, played off by the old 
commodore and his school-fellow, Robert Juet, 
which does such vast credit to their experi- 
mental philosophy, that I cannot refrain from 
inserting it. "Our master and his mate de- 
termined to try some of the chiefe men of the 
country, whether they had any treacherie 
in them. So they tooke them downe into 
the cabin, and gave them so much wine and 
aqua vitae, that they were all merrie; and 
one of them had his wife with him which sate 
so modestly, as any of our countrey women 
would do in a strange place. In the end, one 
of them was drunke, which had been aborde 
of our ship all the time that he had been there, 
and that was strange to them, for they could 
not tell how to take it." 

He then proceeded on his voyage with great 
self-complacency. After sailing, however, 
above an hundred miles up the river, he found 
the watery world around him began to grow 

21 



more shallow and confined, the current more 
rapid, and perfectly fresh, — phenomena not 
uncommon in the ascent of rivers, but which 
puzzled the honest Dutchmen prodigiously. 
A consultation was therefore called, and hav- 
ing deliberated full six hours, they were brought 
to a determination by the ship's running 
aground, — whereupon they unanimously con- 
cluded, that there was but little chance of 
getting to China in this direction. A boat, 
however, was despatched to explore higher 
up the river, which, on its return, confirmed 
the opinion; upon this the ship was warped 
off and put about, with great difficulty, be- 
ing, like most of her sex, exceedingly hard to 
govern; and the adventurous Hudson, ac- 
cording to the account of my great-great- 
grandfather, returned down the river — with a 
prodigious flea in his ear? 

Being satisfied that there was little like- 
lihood of getting to China, unless, like the 
blind man, he returned from whence he set 
out, and took a fresh start, he forthwith re- 
crossed the sea to Holland, where he was re- 
ceived with great welcome by the honorable 
East India Company, who were very much 
rejoiced to see him come back safe — with their 
ship; and at a large and respectable meeting 
of the first merchants and burgomasters of 



Amsterdam, it was unanimously determined 
that as a munificent reward for the eminent 
services he had performed, and the important 
discovery he had made, the great river Mo- 
hegan shall be called after his name — and it 
continues to be called Hudson river unto this 
very day. 

Letters-patent were granted by govern- 
ment to an association of merchants, called 
the West India Company, for the exclusive 
trade on Hudson river, on which they erected 
a trading-house, called Fort Aurania, or 
Orange, from whence did spring the great 
city of Albany. 

It was some three or four years after the 
return of the immortal Hendrick, that a crew 
of honest, Low-Dutch colonists set sail from 
the city of Amsterdam for the shores of Amer- 
ica. The " Goede Vrouw" made out to accom- 
plish her voyage in a very few months, and 
came to anchor at the mouth of the Hudson 
a little to the east of Gibbet Island. 

Here, lifting up their eyes, they beheld, on 
what is at present called the Jersey shore, a 
small Indian village, pleasantly embowered 
in a grove of spreading elms, and the natives 
all collected on the beach, gazing in stupid 
admiration at the "Goede Vrouw." A boat was 
immediately dispatched to enter into a treaty 

23 



with them, and approaching the shore, hailed 
them through a trumpet, in the most friendly 
terms; but so horribly confounded were these 
poor savages at the tremendous and uncouth 
sound of the Low-Dutch language, that they 
one and all took to their heels, and scampered 
over the Bergen hills; nor did they stop until 
they had buried themselves, head and ears, 
in the marshes on the other side, where they 
all miserably perished to a man; — and their 
bones, being collected and decently covered 
by the Tammany Society of that day, formed 
that singular mound called Rattlesnake Hill, 
which rises out of the center of the salt marshes 
a little to the east of the Newark Causeway. 
Animated by this unlooked-for victory ,our 
valiant heroes sprang ashore in triumph, took 
possession of the soil as conquerors, in the name 
of their High Mightinesses the Lords States 
General; and, marching fearlessly forward, car- 
ried the village of Communipaw by storm, 
notwithstanding that it was vigorously de- 
fended by some half score of old squaws and 
papooses. On looking about them they were 
so transported with the excellencies of the 
place, that they had very little doubt the 
blessed St. Nicholas had guided them thither, 
as the very spot whereon to settle their col- 
ony. The softness of the soil was wonderfully 



adapted to the driving of piles; the swamps and 
marshes around them afforded ample oppor- 
tunities for the constructing of dykes and 
dams; the shallowness of the shore was pe- 
culiarly favorable to the building of docks; — 
in a word, this spot abounded with all the req- 
uisites for the foundation of a great Dutch 
city. On making a faithful report, therefore, 
to the crew of the "Goede Vrouw,"they one 
and all determined that this was the destined 
end of their voyage. Accordingly they de- 
scended from the "Goede Vrouw," men, women, 
and children, in goodly groups, as did the 
animals of yore from the ark, and formed them- 
selves into a thriving settlement, which they 
called by the Indian name Communipaw. 

As all the world is doubtless acquainted 
with Communipaw, it may seem somewhat 
superfluous to treat of it in the present work; 
but my readers will please to recollect, not- 
withstanding it is my chief desire to satisfy 
the present age, yet I write likewise for pos- 
terity, and have to consult the understanding 
and curiosity of some half a score of centuries 
yet to come, by which time, perhaps, were 
it not for this invaluable history, the great 
Communipaw, like Babylon, Carthage, Nine- 
vah and other great cities, might be perfectly 
extinct, — sunk and forgotten in its own mud, 

25 



— its inhabitants turned into oysters, and even 
its situation a fertile subject of learned con- 
troversy and hard-headed investigation among 
indefatigable historians. Let me then piously 
rescue from oblivion the humble relics of a 
place, which was the egg from whence was 
hatched the mighty city of New York! 

Communipaw is at present but a small vil- 
lage, pleasantly situated, among rural scenery, 
on that beauteous part of the Jersey shore 
which was known in ancient legends by the 
name of Pavonia, and commands a grand 
prospect of the superb bay of New York. It 
is within but half an hour's sail of the latter 
place, provided you have a fair wind, and may 
be distinctly seen from the city. Nay, it is 
a well-known fact, which I can testify from 
my own experience, that on a clear, still sum- 
mer evening, you may hear, from the Battery 
of New York, the obstreperous peals of broad 
mouthed laughter of the Dutch negroes at 
Communipaw, who, like most other negroes 
are famous for their risible powers. 

Communipaw, in short, is one of the numerous 
little villages in the vicinity of this most beau- 
tiful of cities, which are so many strongholds 
and fastnesses, whither the primitive manners 
of our Dutch forefathers have retreated, and 
where they are cherished with devout and 

26 



scrupulous strictness. The language likewise 
continues unadulterated by barbarous inno- 
vations; and so critically correct is the village 
schoolmaster in his dialect, that his reading 
of a Low-Dutch psalm has much the same 
effect on the nerves as the filing of a hand saw. 

The crew of the "Goede Vrouw" being soon 
reinforced by fresh importations from Hol- 
land, the settlement went jollily on, increas- 
ing in magnitude and prosperity. The Indians 
were much given to long talks, and the Dutch 
to long silence; — in this particular, therefore, 
they accommodated each other completely. 
The chiefs would make long speeches about the 
big bull, the Wabash, and the Great Spirit, 
to which the others would listen very at- 
tentively, smoke their pipes, and grunt yah, 
myhn-her, — whereat the poor savages were 
wondrously delighted. They instructed the 
new settlers in the best art of curing and smok- 
ing tobacco, while the latter, in return, made 
them drunk with true Hollands — and then 
taught them the art of making bargains. 

As to the honest burghers of Communipaw, 
likewise men and sound philosophers, they 
never look beyond their pipes, nor trouble 
their heads about any affairs out of their im- 
mediate neighborhood; so that they live in a 
profound and enviable ignorance of all the 

27 



troubles, anxieties, and revolutions of this dis- 
tracted planet. I am even told that many 
among them do verily believe that Holland, 
of which they have heard so much from tradi- 
tion, is situated somewhere on Long Island, — 
that Spiking-devil and the Narrows are the 
two ends of the world, — that the country 
is still under the dominion of their High 
Mightinesses, — and that the city of New York 
still goes by the name of Nieuw Amsterdam. 
They meet every Saturday afternoon at the 
only tavern in the place, which bears as a 
sign a square-headed likeness of the Prince 
of Orange, where they smoke a silent pipe, 
by way of promoting social conviviality, and 
invariably drink a mug of cider to the success 
of Admiral Van Tromp, who they imagine is 
still sweeping the British channel, with a broom 
at his mast-head. 



28 



Peter Stuyvesant's Journey 
as narrated by Irving 



Here and there might be seen a rude wig- 
wam perched among the cliffs of the moun- 
tains, with its curling column of smoke mount- 
ing in the transparent atmosphere, — but so 
loftily situated that the whoopings of the sav- 
age children, gambolling on the margin of the 
dizzy heights, fell almost as faintly on the ear 
as the notes of the lark when lost in the azure 
vault of heaven. Now and then, from the 
beetling brown of some precipice, the wild 
deer would look timidly down upon the splen- 
did pageant as it passed below, and then, toss- 
ing his antlers in the air, would bound away 
into the thickest of the forest. 

Through such scenes did the stately vessel 
of Peter Stuyvesant pass. Now did they 
skirt the bases of the rocky heights of Jersey, 
which spring up like everlasting walls, reach- 
ing from the waves unto the heavens, and 
were fashioned, if tradition may be believed, 
in times along past, by the mighty spirit 

29 



Manetho, to protect his favorite abodes from 
the unhallowed eyes of mortals. Now did 
they career it gayly across the vast expanse 
of Tappen Bay, whose wide-extended shores 
present a variety of delectable scenery, — 
here the bold promontory, crowned with em- 
bowering trees, advancing into the bay, — 
there the long woodland slope, sweeping up 
from the shore in rich luxuriance, and termi- 
nating in the upland precipice, — while at a 
distance a long waving line of rocky heights 
threw their gigantic shades across the water. 
Now would they pass where some modest 
little interval, opening among these stupend- 
ous scenes, yet retreating as it were for pro- 
tection into the embraces of the neighboring 
mountains, displayed a rural paradise, fraught 
with sweet and pastoral beauties, — the velvet- 
tufted lawn, the bushy copse, the tinkling 
rivulet, stealing through the fresh and vivid 
verdure, on whose banks was situated some 
little Indian village, or, peradventure, the 
rude cabin of some solitary hunter. 

The different periods of the revolving day 
seemed each, with cunning magic, to diffuse a 
different charm over the scene. Now would 
the jovial sun break gloriously from the east 
blazing from the summits of the hills, and 
sparkling the landscape with a thousand dewy 

30 



gems; while along the borders of the river were 
seen the heavy masses of mist, which like 
midnight caitiffs disturbed at his approach, 
made a sluggish retreat, rolling in sullen re- 
luctance up the mountains. At such times 
all was brightness, and life, and gayety, — the 
atmosphere was of an indescribable pureness 
and transparency,— the birds broke forth in 
wanton madrigals, and the freshening breezes 
wafted the vessel merrily on her course. But 
when the sun set amid a flood of glory in the 
west, mantling the heavens and the earth with 
a thousand gorgeous dyes, then all was calm, 
and silent, and magnificent. The late swell- 
ing sail hung lifelessly against the mast; — 
the seaman, with folded arms, leaned against 
the shrouds, lost in that involuntary musing 
which the sober grandeur of nature commands 
in the rudest of her children. The vast bosom 
of the Hudson was like an unruffled mirror, 
reflecting the golden hue of the heavens, ex- 
cepting that now and then a bark canoe would 
steal across its surface, filled with painted 
savages, whose gay feathers glared brightly as 
perchance a lingering ray of the setting sun 
gleamed upon them from the western moun- 
tains. 

But when the hour of twilight spread its 
majestic mists around, then did the face of 

31 



nature assume a thousand fugitive charms, 
which to the worthy heart that seeks enjoy- 
ment in the glorious works of its Maker are 
inexpressibly captivating. The mellow, dubi- 
ous light that prevailed just served to tinge 
with illusive colors the softened features of 
the scenery. The deceived but delighted eye 
sought vainly to discern in the broad masses 
of shade the separating line between the land 
and water, or to distinguish the fading objects 
that seemed sinking into choas. Now did the 
busy fancy supply the feebleness of vision, pro- 
ducing with industrious craft a fairy creation 
of her own. Under her plastic want the bar- 
ren rocks frowned upon the watery waste in 
the semblance of lofty towers and high em- 
battled castles, — trees assumed the direful 
forms of mighty giants, and the inaccessible 
summits of the mountains seemed peopled 
with a thousand shadowy beings. 

Thus happily did they pursue their course, 
until they entered upon those awful defiles 
denominated the Highlands, where it would 
seem that the gigantic Titans had erst waged 
their impious war with heaven, piling up cliffs 
on cliffs, and hurling vast masses of rock in 
wild confusion. But in sooth very different 
is the history of these cloud-capt mountains. 
These in ancient days, before the Hudson 

32 



poured its waters from the lakes, formed one 
vast prison, within whose rocky bosom the 
omnipotent Manetho confined the rebellious 
spirits who repined at his control. Here, bound 
in adamantine chains, or jammed in rifted 
pines, or crushed by ponderous rocks, they 
groaned for many an age. At length the con- 
quering Hudson, in its career towards the 
ocean, burst open their prison-house, rolling 
its tide triumphantly through the stupendous 
ruins. 

Still, however, do many of them lurk about 
their old abodes; and these it is, according to 
venerable legends, that cause the echoes which 
resound throughout these awful solitudes, — 
which are nothing but their angry clamors 
when any noise disturbs the profoundness of 
their repose. For when the elements are agi- 
tated by tempest, when the winds are up and 
the thunder rolls, then horrible is the yelling 
and howling of these troubled spirits, making 
the mountains to rebellow with their hideous 
uproar; for at such times it is said that they 
think the great Manetho is returning once 
more to plunge them in gloomy caverns, and 
renew their intolerable captivity. 

But all these fair and glorious scenes were 
lost upon the gallant Stuyvesant; naught oc- 
cupied his mind but thoughts of iron war, and 



pround anticipations of hardy deeds of arms. 
Neither did his honest crew trouble their heads 
with any romantic speculations of the kind. 
The pilot at the helm quietly smoked his pipe, 
thinking of nothing either past, present or to 
come; — those of his comrades who were not 
industriously smoking under the hatches were 
listening with open mouths to Antony Van 
Corlear. 

And now I am going to tell a fact, which I 
doubt much my readers will hesitate to be- 
lieve; but if they do, they are welcome not 
to believe a word in this whole history, for 
nothing it contains is more true. It must be 
known then that the nose of Antony the 
trumpeter was of a very lusty size, strutting 
boldly from his countenance like a mountain 
of Golconda; being sumptuouslybedecked with 
rubies and other precious stones, — the true 
regalia of a king of good fellows, which jolly 
Bacchus grants to all who bouse it heartily 
at the flagon. Now, thus it happened, that 
bright and early in the morning, the good 
Antony, having washed his burly visage, was 
leaning over the quarter-railing of the galley, 
contemplating it in the glassy wave below. 
Just at this moment the illustrious sun, break- 
ing in all its splendor from behind a high bluff 
of the highlands, did dart one of his most 

34 



potent beams full upon the refulgent nose of the 
sounder of brass — the reflection of which shot 
straightway down, hissing-hot, into the water, 
and killed a mighty sturgeon that was sport- 
ing beside the vessel! This huge monster, being 
with infinite labor hoisted on board, furnished 
a luxurious repast to all the crew, being ac- 
counted of excellent flavor, excepting about 
the wound, where it smacked a little of brim- 
stone; and this, on my veracity, was the 
first time that ever sturgeon was eaten in 
these parts by Christian people. 

When this astonishing miracle came to be 
make known to Peter Stuyvesant, and that 
he tasted of the unknown fish, he, as may well 
be supposed, marvelled exceedingly; and as 
a monument thereof, he gave the name An- 
tony's Nose to a stout promontory in the 
neighborhood; and it has continued to be 
called Antony's Nose ever since that time. 

The good people of New Amsterdam crowd- 
ed down to the Battery, — that blest resort, 
from whence so many a tender prayer has 
been wafted, so many a fair hand waved, so 
many a tearful look been cast by lovesick dam- 
sel, after the lessening bark, bearing her ad- 
venturous swain to distant climes! — Here the 
populace watched with straining eyes the 
gallant squadron, as it slowly floated down 

35 



the bay, and when the intervening land at 
the Narrows shut it from their sight, gradually 
dispersed with silent tongues and downcast 
countenances. 



The Journey of Van Rensellaer the 

Patroon from New York to Albany 

as narrated by Irving 



One day when Wouter Van T wilier and 
his counsellors were smoking and pondering. . 
over the affairs of the province they were 
roused by the sound of a cannon. Sallying 
forth they beheld a strange vessel at anchor 
in the bay. After a while, a boat put off for 
land, and a stranger stepped on shore, — a 
lofty, lordly kind of man, tall and dry, with 
a meagre face, furnished with huge moustache 
He was clad in Flemish doublet and hose, and 
an insufferably tall hat, with a cocktail feather. 
Such was the patroon Killian Van Rensellaer 
who had come out from Holland to found a 
colony or patroonship on a great tract of wild 
land, granted to him by their High Mighti- 
nesses the Lords States General, in the upper 
regions of the Hudson. 

And now, from time to time, floated down 
tidings to the Manhattoes of the growing im- 
portance of this new colony, Every account 

37 



represented Killian Van Rensellaer as rising 
in importance and becoming a mighty pa- 
troon in the land. He had received more re- 
cruits from Holland. His patroonship of Ren- 
sellaerwick lay immediately below Fort Au- 
rania, and extended for several miles on each 
side of the Hudson, beside embracing the 
mountainous region of the Helderberg. Over 
all this he claimed to hold separate jurisdic- 
tion, independent of the colonial authorities 
of New Amsterdam. 

At length tidings came that the patroon of 
Rensellaerwick had extended his usurpations 
along the river, beyond the limits granted 
him by their High Mightinesses; and that 
he had even seized upon a rocky island in the 
Hudson, commonly known by the name of 
Beam Island, where he was erecting a fortress 
to be called by the lordly name of "Rensel- 
laerstein." 

Wouter Van Twiller was roused by this 
intelligence. After consulting with his bur- 
gomasters, he dispatched a letter to the pa- 
troon of Rensellaerwick, demanding by what 
right he had seized upon this island, which 
lay beyond the bounds of his patroonship. 
The answer of Killian Van Rensellaer was 
in his own lordly style, "By wapen recht!" — 
that is to say, by the right of arms, or, in 

38 



common parlance, by club-law. This answer 
plunged the worthy Wouter in one of the deep- 
est doubts he had in the whole course of his 
administration; in the meantime, while Wout- 
er doubted, the lordly Killian went on to 
finish his fortress of Rensellaerstein, about 
which I foresee I shall have something to record 
in a future chapter of this most eventful history. 
In the fulness of time the yacht arrived be- 
fore Beam Island, and Antony the Trumpeter, 
mounting the poop, sounded a parley to the 
fortress. In a little while the steeple crowned 
hat of Nicholas Koorn, the wacht-meester, 
rose above the battlements, followed by his 
iron visage, and ultimately his whole person, 
armed, as before to the very teeth; while one 
by one, a whole row of Helderbergers reared 
their round burly heads above the wall, and 
beside each pumpkin-head peered the end of a 
rusty musket. Nothing daunted by this for- 
midable array Antony Van Corlear drew forth 
and read his missive from William the Testy 
ordering the garrison to quit the premises 
bag and baggage on pain of vengeance of the 
potentate of the Manhattoes. In reply the 
wacht-meester applied the thumb of his right 
hand to the end of his nose and the thumb of 
his left hand to the little finger of his right, 
and spreading each hand like a fan, made an 

39 



aerial flourish with his fingers. Antony Van 
Corlear was sorely perplexed to understand 
this sign which seemed to him something mys- 
terious and masonic. Not liking to betray 
his ignorance he again read with a loud voice 
the missive of William the Testy, and again 
Nicholas Koorn applied the thumb of his 
right hand to the end of his nose, and repeated 
this kind of nasal weathercock. Anthony 
Van Corlear now persuaded himself that this 
was some shorthand sign or symbol, current 
in diplomacy, which, though unintelligible 
to a new diplomat, like himself, would spell 
volumes to the experienced intellect of Wil- 
liam the Testy; considering his embassy there- 
fore at an end he sounded his trumpet with 
great complacency, and set sail on his return 
down the river, every now and then practic- 
ing the mysterious sign of the wacht-meester 
to keep it accurately in mind. 

Arrived at New Amsterdam he made a 
faithful report of his embassy to the Governor, 
accompanied by a manual exhibition of the 
response of Nicholas Koorn. The Governor 
was equally perplexed with his embassy. He 
was deeply versed in the mysteries of Free 
Masonry, but they threw no light on the mat- 
ter. He knew every variety of windmill and 
weathercock but was not a whit the wiser as 

40 



to the aerial sign in question. He called a 
meeting of his Council. Antony Van Corlear 
stood forth in the midst and putting the 
thumb of his right hand to his nose and the 
thumb of his left hand to the finger of the 
right, he gave a faithful facsimile of the por- 
tentous sign. Having a nose of unusual 
dimensions, it was as if the reply was placed 
in capitals, but all in vain, the worthy burgo- 
masters were equally perplexed with the 
Governor. Each one put his thumb to the 
end of his nose, spread his fingers like a fan, 
imitated the motion of Antony Van Corlear 
and smoked in dubious silence. Several times 
was Antony obliged to stand forth like a fugle- 
man, and repeat the sign, and each time a cir- 
cle of nasal weathercocks might be seen in the 
Council Chamber. 

The Council broke up in sore perplexity. 
The matter got abroad and Antony Van Corlear 
was stopped at every corner to repeat the sig- 
nal to a knot of anxious newsmongers, each 
of whom departed with his thumb to his nose 
and his fingers in the air, to carry the story 
home to his family. 

And it is still said that to the present day 
the thumb to the nose and the fingers in the 
air is apt to be the reply of the Heldcrbergers 
whenever called upon for any long arrears of rent. 

41 



Oloffe Van Kortlandt's Dream at the 
Battery of Manhattan 



His wonderful prophecy of the founding of 

New York City and its marvelous 

fulfilment 



Washington Irving now recalls and recites 
to us at our request the "Dream of Oloffe 
Van Kortlandt" and its early fulfilment which 
he also at times refers to, when speaking of 
New York, as "A lively and wonderful chick- 
en hatched from the egg of old Communipaw" 
so he now relates to us how (some two hundred 
years ago) the sage Oloffe voyaged from Com- 
munipaw Bay to the Battery where he had a 
most remarkable dream now completely ful- 
filled that the good St. Nicholas came riding 
over the tops of the trees, and descended upon 
the island of Manhattan and sat himself down 
and smoked, "and the smoke ascended in the 
sky, and formed a cloud overhead; and Oloffe 

42 



bethought him, and he hastened and climbed 
up to the top of one of the tallest trees, and 
saw that the smoke spread over a great ex- 
tent of country; and, as he considered it more 
attentively, he fancied that the great volume 
assumed a variety of marvelous forms, where, 
in dim obscurity, he saw shadowed out palaces 
and domes and lofty spires, all of which lasted 
but a moment, and then passed away." So 
New York, like Alba Longa and Rome, and 
other cities of antiquity, was under the im- 
mediate care of its tutelar saint. Its destiny 
was foreshadowed, for now the palaces and 
domes and lofty spires are real and genuine, 
and something more than dreams are made of. 



43 



The Legend of Sleepy Hollow 



In the bosom of one of those spacious coves 
which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, 
at that broad expansion of the river denomi- 
nated by the ancient Dutch navigators the 
Tappan Zee, and where they always prudently 
shortened sail, and implored the protection of 
St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a 
small market-town or rural port, which by 
some is called Greensburgh, but which is 
more generally and properly known by the 
name of Tarry Town. This name was given, 
we are told, in former days, by the good house- 
wives of the adjacent country, from the in- 
veterate propensity of their husbands to 
linger about the village tavern on market days. 
Be that as it may, I do not vouch for the fact, 
but merely advert to it, for the sake of being 
precise and authentic. Not far from this 
village, perhaps about two miles, there is a 
little valley, or rather lap of land, among high 
hills, which is one of the quietest places in the 
whole world. A small brook glides through 
it, with just murmur enough to lull one to 

44 



repose; and the occasional whistle of a quail, or 
tapping of a woodpecker, is almost the only 
sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform 
tranquillity. 

I recollect that, when a stripling, my first 
exploit in squirrel-shooting was in a grove of 
tall walnut-trees that shades one side of the 
valley. I had wandered into it at noon time, 
when all nature is peculiarly quiet, and was 
startled by the roar of my own gun, as it broke 
the Sabbath stillness around, and was pro- 
longed and reverberated by the angry echoes. 
If ever I should wish for a retreat, whither 
I might steal from the world and its distrac- 
tions, and dream quietly away the remnant of 
a troubled life, I know of none more promising 
than this little valley. 

From the listless repose of the place, and the 
peculiar character of its inhabitants, who are 
descendants from the original Dutch settlers, 
this sequestered glen has long been known by 
the name of Sleepy Hollow, and its rustic lads 
are called the Sleepy Hollow Boys throughout 
all the neighboring country. A drowsy, 
dreamy influence seems to hang over the land 
and to pervade the very atmosphere. Some 
say that the place was bewitched by a high 
German doctor, during the early days of the 
settlement; others, that an old Indian chief, 

45 



the prophet or wizard of his tribe, held his 
pow-wows there before the country was dis- 
covered by Master Hendrick Hudson. Cer- 
tain it is, the place still continues under the 
sway of some witching power, that holds a 
spell over the minds of the good people, caus- 
ing them to walk in a continual reverie. They 
are given to all kinds of marvellous beliefs; 
are subject to trances and visions; and fre- 
quently see strange sights, and hear music and 
voices in the air. The whole neighborhood 
abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and 
twilight superstitions; stars shoot and meteors 
glare oftener across the valley than in any 
other part of the country, and the nightmare, 
with her whole nine fold, seems to make it the 
favorite scene of her gambols. 

The dominant spirit, however, that haunts 
this enchanted region, and seems to be com- 
mander-in-chief of all the powers of the air, 
is the apparition of a figure on horseback 
without a head. It is said by some to be the 
ghost of a Hessian trooper, whose head had 
been carried away by a cannon-ball, in some 
nameless battle during the Revolutionary war; 
and who is ever and anon seen by the country 
folk, hurrying along the gloom of night, as if 
on wings of the wind. His haunts are not 
confined to the valley, but extend at times to 

46 



the adjacent roads, and especially to the vicin- 
ity of a church at no great distance. Indeed, 
certain of the most authentic historians of 
those parts, who have been careful in collect- 
ing and collating the floating facts concerning 
this spectre, allege that the body of the troop- 
er, having been buried in the church-yard, the 
ghost rides forth to the scene of battle in 
nightly quest of his head; and that the rushing 
speed with which he sometimes passes along 
the Hollow, like a midnight blast, is owing to 
his being belated, and in a hurry to get back 
to the churchyard before daybreak. 

Such is the general purport of this legendary 
superstition, which has furnished material 
for many a wild story in that region of shadows; 
and the specter is known, at all the country 
firesides, by the name of the Headless Horse- 
man of Sleepy Hollow. 

It is remarkable that the visionary propen- 
sity I have mentioned is not confined to the 
native inhabitants of the valley, but is un- 
consciously imbibed by every one who re- 
sides there for a time. However wide-awake 
they may have been before they entered that 
sleepy region, they are sure, in a little time, 
to inhale the witching influence of the air, and 
begin to grow imaginative — to dream dreams, 
and see apparitions. 

47 



I mention this peaceful spot with all possible 
laud; for it is in such little retired Dutch val- 
leys, found here and there embosomed in the 
great State of New York, that population, 
manners and customs, remain fixed; while 
the great torrent of migration and improvement 
which is making such incessant changes in 
other parts of this restless country, sweeps 
by them unobserved. They are like those 
little nooks of still water which border a rapid 
stream; where we may see the straw and bubble 
riding quietly at anchor, or slowly revolving 
in their mimic harbor, undisturbed by the 
rush of the passing current. Though many 
years have elapsed since I trod the drowsy 
shades of Sleepy Hollow, yet I question wheth- 
er I should not still find the same trees and the 
same families vegetating in its sheltered bosom. 

In this by-place of nature, there abode, in 
a remote period of American history, that is 
to say, some thirty years since, a worthy 
wight of the name of Ichabod Crane; who 
sojourned, or, as he expressed it, "tarried," 
in Sleepy Hollow, for the purpose of instruct- 
ing the children of the vicinity. 

That all this might not be too onerous on 
the purses of his rustic patrons, who are apt 
to consider the cost of schooling a grievous 
burden, and schoolmasters as mere drones, he 

48 



had various ways of rendering himself both 
useful and agreeable. He assisted the farm- 
ers occasionally in the lighter labors of their 
farms; helped to make hay, mended the fences; 
took the horses to water; drove the cows from 
pasture; and cut wood for the winter fire. 
He laid aside, too, all the dominant dignity and 
absolute sway with which he lorded it in his 
little empire, the school, and became wonder- 
fully gentle and ingratiating. He found favor 
in the eyes of the mothers, by petting the 
children, particularly the youngest; and like 
the lion bold, which whilom so magnani- 
mously the lamb did hold, he would sit with a 
child on one knee, and rock a cradle with his 
foot for whole hours together. 

In addition to his other vocations, he was 
the singing-master of the neighborhood, and 
picked up many bright shillings by instruct- 
ing the young folks in psalmody. It was a 
matter of no little vanity to him, on Sunday 
to take his station in front of the church gal- 
lery, with a band of chosen singers where, in 
his own mind, he completely carried away the 
psalm from the parson. Certain it is, his 
voice resounded far above all the rest of the 
congregation; and there are peculiar quavers 
still to be heard in that church, and which may 
even be heard half a mile off, quite to the 

49 



opposite side of the mill-pond, on a still Sunday 
morning, which are said to be legitimately 
descended from the nose of Ichabod Crane. 
Thus, by divers little makeshifts in that in- 
genious way which is commonly denominated 
"by hook and by crook" the worthy pedagogue 
got on tolerably enough, and was thought by 
all who understood nothing of the labor of head 
work to have a wonderfully easy life of it. 
The school master is generally a man of 
some importance in the female circle of a ru- 
ral neighborhood; being considered a kind of 
idle gentlemanlike personage, of vastly supe- 
rior taste and accomplishments to the rough 
country swains, and, indeed, inferior in learn- 
ing only to the parson. His appearance, there- 
fore, is apt to occasion some little stir at the 
tea-table of a farmhouse, and the addition of 
a supernumerary dish of cakes or sweetmeats, 
or, peradventure, the parade of a silver tea- 
pot. Our man of letters, therefore, was pe- 
culiarly happy in the smiles of all country dam- 
sels. How he would figure among them in the 
churchyard, between services on Sundays! 
gathering grapes for them from the wild vines 
that overrun the surrounding trees; reciting 
for their amusement all the epitaphs on the 
tombstones; or sauntering, with a whole bevy 
of them, along the banks of the adjacent 

50 



mill-pond; while the more bashful country 
pumpkins hung sheepishly back, envying his 
superior elegance and address. 

Prom his half itinerant life, also, he was a 
kind of traveling gazette, carrying the whole 
budget of local gossip from house to house; 
so that his appearance was always greeted 
with satisfaction. He was, moreover, es- 
teemed by the women as a man of great eru- 
dition, for he had read several books quite 
through, and was a perfect master of Cotton 
Mather's history of New England Witchcraft, 
in which, by the way, he most firmly and po- 
tently believed. 

He was, in fact, an odd mixture of small 
shrewdness and simple credulity. His appe- 
tite for the marvelous, and his powers of digest- 
ing it, were equally extraordinary; and both 
had been increased by his residence in this 
spellbound region. No tale was too gross or 
monstrous for his capacious swallow. It was 
often his delight, after his school was dismissed 
in the afternoon, to stretch himself on the 
rich bed of clover, bordering the little brook 
that whimpered by his school-house, and there 
con over old Mather's direful tales, until the 
gathering dusk of the evening made the print- 
ed page a mere mist before his eyes. Then, 
as he wended his way, by swamp and stream 

51 



and awful woodland, to the farmhouse where 
he happened to be quartered, every sound of 
nature, at that witching hour, fluttered his 
excited imagination: the moan of the whip- 
poorwill from the hillside; the boding cry 
of the tree-toad, that harbinger of storm; the 
dreary hooting of the screech owl, or the sud- 
den rustling in the thicket of birds frightened 
from their roost. 

Another of his sources of fearful pleasure 
was, to pass long winter evenings with the old 
Dutch wives, as they sat spinning by the fire, 
with a row of apples roasting and sputtering 
along the hearth, and listen to their marvelous 
tales of ghosts and goblins, and haunted fields, 
and haunted brooks, and haunted bridges, 
and haunted houses, and particularly of the 
headless horseman, or galloping Hessian of 
the Hollow, as they sometimes called him. He 
would delight them equally by his anecdotes 
of witchcraft, and of the direful moans and 
portentous sights and sound in the air, which 
prevailed in the earlier times of Connecticut; 
and would frighten them wofully with specu- 
lations upon comets and shooting stars; and 
with the alarming fact that the world did ab- 
solutely turn round, and that they were half 
the time topsy-turvy! 

What fearful shapes and shadows beset his 

52 



path amidst the dim and ghastly glare of a 
snowy night! — With what wistful look did he 
eye every trembling ray of light streaming 
across the waste fields from some distant win- 
dow! — How often was he appalled by some 
shrub covered with snow, which, like a sheeted 
spectre, beset his very path! — How often did 
he shrink with curdling awe at the sound of 
his own steps on the frosty crust beneath his 
feet; and dread to look over his shoulder, lest 
he should behold some uncouth being tramp- 
ing close behind him! — and how often was he 
thrown into complete dismay by some rushing 
blast, howling among the trees, in the idea 
that it was the Galloping Hessian on one of his 
nightly scourings! 

All these, however, were mere terrors of the 
night, phantoms of the mind that walk in 
darkness; and though he had seen many spec- 
tres in his time, and been more than once beset 
by Satan in divers shapes, in his lonely peram- 
bulations, yet daylight put an end to all these 
evils; and he would have passed a pleasant life of 
it, in despite of the devil and all his works, if 
his path had not been crossed by a being that 
causes more perplexity to mortal man than 
ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches 
put together, and that was — a woman. 

Among the musical disciples who assembled, 

53 



one evening in each week, to receive his instruc- 
tions in psalmody, was Katrina Van Tassel 
the daughter and only child of a substantial 
Dutch farmer. She was a blooming lass of 
fresh eighteen; plump as a partridge; ripe 
and melting and rosy cheeked as one of her 
father's peaches, and universally famed, not 
merely for her beauty, but her vast expecta- 
tions. She was withal a little of a coquette, 
as might be perceived even in her dress, which 
was a mixture of ancient and modern fashions, 
as most suited to set off her charms. She 
wore the ornaments of pure yellow gold, 
which her great-great-grandmother had brought 
over from Saardam; the tempting stomacher 
of the olden time; and withal a provoking 
short petticoat, to display the prettiest foot 
and ankle in the country round. 

Ichabod Crane had a soft and foolish heart 
towards the sex; and it is not to be wondered 
at, that so tempting a morsel soon found favor 
in his eyes; more especially after he had visit- 
ed her in her paternal mansion. Old Baltus 
Van Tassel was a perfect picture of a thriving, 
contented, liberal-hearted farmer. He seldom, 
it is true, sent either his eyes or his thoughts 
beyond the boundaries of his own farm; but 
within those everything was snug, happy, and 
well-conditioned. He was satisfied with his 

54 



wealth, but not proud of it; and piqued him- 
self upon the hearty abundance, rather than 
the style in which he lived. His stronghold 
was situated on the banks of the Hudson, in 
one of those green, sheltered, fertile nooks, in 
which the Dutch farmers are so fond of nest- 
ling. A great elm tree spread its broad branch- 
es over it; at the foot of which bubbled up a 
spring of the softest and sweetest water, in a 
little well, formed of a barrel; and then stole 
sparkling away through the grass, to a neigh- 
boring brook, that bubbled along among alders 
and dwarf willows. Hard by the farmhouse 
was a vast barn, that might have served for a 
church; every window and crevice of which 
seemed bursting forth with the treasures of 
the farm; the flail was busily resounding with- 
in it from morning to night; swallows and 
martins skimmed twittering about the eaves; 
and rows of pigeons, some with one eye turned 
up, as if watching the weather, some with their 
heads under their wings, or buried in their 
bosoms, and others swelling,, and cooing, and 
bowing about their dames, were enjoying the 
sunshine on the roof. Sleek unwieldy pork- 
ers were grunting in the repose and abundance 
of their pens; whence sallied forth, now and 
then, troops of sucking pigs, as if to snuff the 
air. A stately squadron of snowy geese were 

55 



riding in an adjoining pond, convoying whole 
fleets of ducks; regiments of turkeys were 
gobbling through the farmyard, and guinea 
fowls fretting about it, like ill-tempered house- 
wives, with their peevish discontented cry. 
Before the barn door strutted the gallant cock, 
that pattern of a husband, a warrior, and a 
fine gentleman, clapping his burnished wings, 
and crowing in the pride and gladness of his 
heart — sometimes tearing up the earth with 
his feet, and then, generously calling his ever- 
hungry family of wives and children to enjoy 
the rich morsel which he had discovered. 

When he entered the house the conquest of 
his heart was complete. It was one of those 
spacious farmhouses, with high-ridged, but 
lowly-sloping roofs, built in the style handed 
down from the first Dutch settlers; the low 
projecting eaves forming a piazza along the 
front, capable of being closed up in bad weath- 
er. Under this were hung flails, harness, va- 
rious utensils of husbandry, and nets for fish- 
ing in the neighboring river. Benches were 
built along the sides for summer use; and a 
great spinning-wheel at one end, and a churn 
at the other, showed the various uses to which 
this important porch might be devoted. From 
this piazza the wondering Ichabod entered 
the hall, which formed the center of the 

56 



mansion and the place of usual residence. Here, 
rows of resplendent pewter, ranged on a long 
dresser, dazzled his eyes. In one corner stood 
a huge bag of wool ready to be spun; in an- 
other a quantity of linsey-woolsey just from 
the loom; ears of Indian corn, and strings of 
dried apples and peaches, hung in gay festoon 
along the walls, mingled with the gaud of red 
peppers; and a door left ajar gave him a peep 
into the best parlor, where the claw-footed 
chairs, and dark mahogany tables, shone like 
mirrors; and irons, with their accompanying 
shovel and tongs, glistened from their covert 
of asparagus tops; mock-oranges and conch- 
shells decorated the mantel-piece; strings of 
various colored birds' eggs were suspended 
above it: a great ostrich egg was hung from 
the centre of the room, and a corner cupboard, 
knowingly left open, displayed immense treas- 
ures of old silver and well-mended china. 

From the moment Ichabod laid his eyes 
upon these regions of delight, the peace of his 
mind was at an end, and his only study was 
how to gain the affections of the peerless 
daughter of Van Tassel. In this enterprise, 
however, he had more real difficulties than 
generally fell to the lot of a knight-errant of 
yore, who seldom had anything but giants, 
enchanters, fiery dragons, and such like 

57 



easily-conquered adversaries, to contend with; 
and had to make his way merely through 
gates of iron and brass, and walls of adamant 
to the castle keep, where the lady of his heart 
was confined; all which he achieved as easily 
as a man would carve his way to the centre of 
a Christmas pie; and then the lady gave him 
her hand as a matter of course. Ichabod, 
on the contrary, had to win his way to the heart 
of a country coquette, beset with a labyrinth 
of whims and caprices, which were forever 
presenting new difficulties and impediments; 
and he had to encounter a host of fearful ad- 
versaries of real flesh and blood, the numerous 
rustic admirers, who beset every portal to 
her heart keeping a watchful and angry eye 
upon each other, but ready to fly out in the 
common cause against any new competitor. 
Among these the most formidable was a 
burly, roaring, roystering blade, of the name 
of Abraham, or, according to the Dutch ab- 
breviation, Brom Van Brunt, the hero of the 
country round, which rang with his feats of 
strength and hardihood. He was broad- 
shouldered and double-jointed, with short 
curling black hair, and a bluff, but not un- 
pleasant countenance, having a mingled air 
of fun and arrogance. From his Herculean 
frame and great powers of limb, he had 

58 



received the nickname of Brom Bones, by which 
he was universally known. He was famed for 
great knowledge and skill in horsemanship 
being as dexterous on horseback as a Tartar. 
He was foremost at all races and cock-fights; 
and, with the ascendency which bodily 
strength acquires in rustic life, was the um- 
pire in all disputes, setting his hat on one side, 
and giving his decisions with an air and tone 
admitting of no gainsay or appeal. He was 
always ready for either a fight or a frolic; 
but had more mischief than ill-will in his com- 
position; and, with all his overbearing rough- 
ness, there was a strong dash of waggish good 
humor at bottom. He had three or four boon 
companions, who regarded him as their model, 
and at the head of whom he scoured the coun- 
try, attending every scene of feud or merri- 
ment for miles round. In cold weather he 
was distinguished by a fur cap, surmounted 
with a flaunting fox's tail; and when the folks 
at a country gathering descried this well- 
known crest at a distance, whisking about 
among a squad of hard riders, they always 
stood by for a squall. Sometimes his crew 
would be heard dashing along past the farm- 
houses at midnight, with whoop and halloo, 
like a troop of Don Cossacks; and the old 
dames, startled out of their sleep, would listen 

59 



for a moment till the hurry-scurry had clat- 
tered by, and then exclaim, "Ay, there goes 
Brom Bones and his gang!" The nieghbors 
looked upon him with a mixture of awe, ad- 
miration, and good will; and when any mad- 
cap prank, or rustic brawl, occurred in the 
vicinity, always shook their heads and war- 
ranted Brom Bones was at the bottom of it. 

This rantipole hero had for some time singled 
out the blooming Katrina for the object of 
his uncouth gallantries, and though his amor- 
ous toyings were something like the gentle 
caresses and endearments of a bear, yet it was 
whispered that she did not altogether dis- 
courage his hopes. Certain it is, his advances 
were signals for rival candidates to retire, who 
felt no inclination to cross a lion in his amours ; 
insomuch, that when his horse was seen tied 
to Van Tassel's paling, on a Sunday night, a 
sure sign that his master was courting, or, 
as it is termed, "sparking," within, all other 
suitors passed by in despair, and carried the 
war into other quarters. 

Such was the formidable rival with whom 
Ichabod Crane had to contend, and, consider- 
ing all things, a stouter man than he would 
have shrunk from the competition, and a wis- 
er man would have despaired. 

To have taken the field openly against his 

60 



rival would have been madness; for he was 
not a man to be thwarted in his armours any 
more than that stormy lover, Achilles. Ich- 
abod, therefore, made his advances in a quiet 
and gently-insinuating manner. Under cov- 
er of his character of singing-master, he made 
frequent visits at the farmhouse; not that he 
had anything to apprehend from the meddle- 
some interference of parents, which is so often 
a stumbling-block in the path of lovers. Bait 
Van Tassell was an easy indulgent soul; he 
loved his daughter better even than his pipe, 
and, like a reasonable man and an excellent 
father, let her have her way in everything. 
His notable little wife, too, had enough to do 
to attend to her housekeeping and manage 
her poultry; for, as she sagely observed, 
ducks and geese are foolish things, and must 
be looked after, but girls can take care of 
themselves. Thus, while the busy dame bust- 
led about the house, or plied her spinning- 
wheel at one end of the piazza, honest Bait 
would sit smoking his evening pipe at the 
other, watching the achievements of a little 
wooden warrior, who, armed with a sword in 
each hand, was most valiantly fighting the 
wind on the pinnacle of the barn. In the 
meantime, Ichabod would carry on his suit 
with the daughter by the side of the spring 

61 



under the great elm, or sauntering along in 
the twilight, that hour so favorable to the lov- 
er's eloquence. 

He who wins a thousand common hearts is 
therefore entitled to some renown; but he 
who keeps undisputed sway over the heart of 
a coquette, is indeed a hero. Certain it is, 
this was not the case with the redoubtable 
Brom Bones; and from the moment Ichabod 
Crane made his advances, the interests of the 
former evidently declined; his horse was no 
longer seen tied at the palings on Sunday 
nights, and a deadly feud gradually arose be- 
tween him and the preceptor of Sleepy Hollow. 

He was gaunt and shagged, with a ewe neck 
and a head like a hammer; his rusty mane and 
tail were tangled and knotted with burrs; one 
eye had lost its pupil, and was glaring and 
spectral; but the other had the gleam of gen- 
uine devil in it. Still he must have had fire 
and mettle in his day, if we may judge from 
the name he bore of Gunpowder. He had, 
in fact, been a favorite steed of his master's 
the choleric Van Ripper, who was a furious 
rider, and had infused, very probably, some 
of his own spirit into the animal; for, old and 
brokendown as he looked, there was more of 
the lurking devil in him than in any young 
filly in the country. 



Ichabod was a suitable figure for such a 
steed. He rode with short stirrups, which 
brought his knees nearly up to the pommel of 
the saddle; his sharp elbows stuck out like 
grasshoppers'; he carried his whip perpen- 
dicularly in his hand, like a sceptre, and, as 
his horse jogged on, the motion of his arm 
was not unlike the flapping of a pair of wings. 
A small wool hat rested on the top of his nose, 
for so his scanty strip of forehead might be 
called; and the skirts of his black coat flutter- 
ed out almost to the horse's tail. Such was 
the appearance of Ichabod and his steed, as 
he shambled out of the gate of Hans Van 
Ripper, and it was altogether such an appari- 
tion as is seldom to be met with in broad day- 
light. 

It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day, 
the sky was clear and serene, and nature wore 
that rich and golden livery which we always 
associate with the idea of abundance. The 
forests had put on their sober brown and yel- 
low, while some trees of the tenderer kind had 
been nipped by the frost into brilliant dyes 
of orange, purple and scarlet. Streaming 
files of wild ducks began to make their ap- 
pearance high in the air; the bark of the squir- 
rel might be heard from the groves of beech and 
hickory nuts, and the pensive whistle of the quail 

63 



at intervals from the neighboring stubble-field. 
The small birds were taking their farewell 
banquets. In the fulness of their revelry, 
they fluttered, chirping and frolicking, from 
bush to bush, and tree to tree, capricious from 
the very profusion and variety around them. 

As Ichabod jogged slowly on his way, his 
eye, ever open to every symptom of culinary 
abundance, ranged with delight over the treas- 
ures of jolly autumn. On all sides he beheld 
vast store of apples; some hanging in oppres- 
sive opulence on the trees; some gathered 
into baskets and barrels for the market; oth- 
ers heaped up in rich piles for the cider-press. 
Farther on he beheld great fields of Indian 
corn, with its golden ears peeping from their 
leafy coverts, and holding out the promise of 
cakes and hasty pudding; and the yellow 
pumpkins lying beneath them, turning up 
their fair round bellies to the sun, and giving 
ample prospects of the most luxurious of pies; 
and anon he passed the fragrant buckwheat 
fields, breathing the odor of the beehive, and 
as he beheld them, soft anticipations stole over 
his mind of dainty slapjacks, well buttered, 
and garnished with honey or treacle, by the 
delicate dimpled hand of Katrina Van Tassel. 

Thus, feeding his mind with many sweet 
thoughts and "sugared suppositions," he jour- 

64 



neyed along the sides of a range of hills which 
look out upon some of the goodliest scenes of 
the mighty Hudson. The sun gradually 
wheeled his broad disk down into the west. 
The wide bosom of the Tappan Zee lay mo- 
tionless and glassy, excepting that here and 
there a gentle undulation waved and pro- 
longed the blue shadow of the distant moun- 
tain. A few amber clouds floated in the sky, 
without a breath of air to move them. The 
horizon was of a fine golden tint, changing 
gradually into a pure apple green, and from 
that into the deep blue of the mid-heaven. 
A slanting ray lingered on the woody crests 
of the precipices that overhung some parts of 
the river, giving greater depth to the dark- 
gray and purple of their rocky sides. A sloop 
was loitering in the distance, dropping slowly 
down with the tide, her sail hanging uselessly 
against the mast; and as the reflection of the 
sky gleamed along the still water, it seemed as 
if the vessel was suspended in the air. 

It was toward evening that Ichabod ar- 
rived at the castle of the Heer Van Tassel, 
which he found thronged with the pride and 
flower of the adjacent country. Old farmers, 
a spare leathern-faced race, in homespun coats 
and breeches, blue stockings, huge shoes, and 
magnificent pewter buckles. Their brisk 



withered little dames, in close crimped caps, 
long-waisted short-gowns, homespun petti- 
coats, with scissors and pincushion, and gay 
calico pockets hanging on the outside. Bux- 
om lassies, almost as antiquated as their moth- 
ers, excepting where a straw hat, a fine ribbon, 
or perhaps a white frock, gave symptoms of 
city innovation. The sons, in short square- 
skirted coats with rows of stupendous brass 
buttons, and their hair generally queued in 
the fashion of the times, especially if they 
could procure an eel-skin for the purpose, it 
being esteemed, through the country, as a po- 
tent nourisher and strengthener of the hair. 

Brom Bones, however, was the hero of the 
scene, having come to the gathering on his 
favorite steed Daredevil, a creature, like him- 
self, full of mettle and mischief, and which no 
one but himself could manage. He was, in 
fact, noted for preferring vicious animals, 
given to all kinds of tricks, which kept the 
rider in constant risk of his neck, for he held a 
tractable well-broken horse as unworthy of a 
lad of spirit. 

Fain would I pause to dwell upon the world 
of charms that burst upon the enraptured gaze 
of my hero, as he entered the state parlor of 
Van Tassel's mansion. Not those of the bevy 
of buxom lassies, with their luxurious display 

66 



of red and white; but the ample charms of a 
genuine Dutch country tea-table, in the sump- 
tuous time orf autumn. Such heaped-up plat- 
ters of cakes of various and almost inde- 
scribable kinds, known only to experienced 
Dutch housewives! There was the doughty 
doughnut, the tenderer oly koek, and the 
crisp and crumbling cruller; sweet cakes and 
short cakes, ginger cakes and honey cakes, 
and the whole family of cakes. And then 
there were apple pies and peach pies and pump- 
kin pies; besides slices of ham and smoked 
beef; and moreover delectable dishes of pre- 
served plums, and peaches, and pears, and 
quinces; not to mention broiled shad and 
roasted chickens, together with bowls of milk 
and cream, all mingled higgledy-piggledy, 
pretty much as I have enumerated them, 
with the motherly tea-pot sending up its 
clouds of vapor from the midst — Heaven bless 
the mark! I want breath and time to dis- 
cuss this banquet as it deserves, and am too 
eager to get on with my story. Happily, 
Ichabod Crane was not in so great a hurry as 
his historian, but did ample justice to every 
dainty. 

He was a kind and thankful creature, whose 
heart dilated in proportion as his skin was 
filled with good cheer; and whose spirits rose 

G7 



with eating as some men's do with drink. He 
could not help, too, rolling his large eyes round 
him as he ate, and chuckling with the possi- 
bility that he might one day be lord of all 
this scene of almost unimaginable luxury and 
splendor. Then, he thought, how soon he'd 
turn his back upon the old school-house; 
snap his fingers in the face of Hans Van Rip- 
per, and every other niggardly patron, and 
kick any itinerant pedagogue out of doors 
that should dare to call him comrade! 

Old Baltus Van Tassel moved about among 
his guests with a face dilated with content and 
good humor, round and jolly as the harvest 
moon. His hospitable attentions were brief, 
but expressive, being confined to a shake of 
the hand, a slap on the shoulder, a loud laugh 
and a pressing invitation to "fall to, and help 
themselves." 

And now the sound of the music from the 
common room, or hall, summoned to the 
dance. The musician was an old grayheaded 
negro, who had been the itinerant orchestra 
of the neighborhood for more than half a cen- 
tury. His instrument was as old and bat- 
tered as himself. The greater part of the time 
he scraped on two or three strings, accompany- 
ing every movement of the bow with a mo- 
tion of the head; bowing almost to the ground, 

68 



and stamping with his foot whenever a fresh 
couple were to start. 

Ichabod prided himself upon his dancing 
as much as upon his vocal powers. Not a 
limp, not a fibre about him was idle; and to 
have seen his loosely hung frame in full mo- 
tion, and clattering about the room, you would 
have thought Saint Vitus himself, that bless- 
ed patron of the dance, was figuring before 
you in person. He was the admiration of all 
the negroes; who, having gathered, of all 
ages and sizes, from the farm and the neigh- 
borhood, stood forming a pyramid of shin- 
ing black faces at every door and window, 
gazing with delight at the scene, rolling their 
white eyeballs, and showing grinning rows 
of ivory from ear to ear. How could the 
flogger of urchins be otherwise than animated 
and joyous? The lady of his heart was his 
partner in the dance, and smiling graciously 
in reply to all his amorous oglings; while Brom 
Bones, sorely smitten with love and jealousy, 
sat brooding by himself in one corner. 

When the dance was at an end, Ichabod 
was attracted to a knot of the sager folks, 
who, with old Van Tassel, sat smoking at one 
end of the piazza, gossiping over former times, 
and drawing out long stories about the war. 

This neighborhood, at the time of which I 

69 



am speaking, was one of those highly-favored 
places which abound with chronicle and great 
men. The British and American line had run 
near it during the war; it had, therefore, 
been the scene of marauding, and infested 
with refugees, cowboys, and all kinds of bor- 
der chivalry. Just sufficient time had elapsed 
to enable each story-teller to dress up his tale 
with a little becoming fiction, and in the in- 
distinctness of his recollections, to make him- 
self the hero of every exploit. 

There was the story of Doffue Martling, a 
large blue-bearded Dutchman, who had near- 
ly taken a British frigate with an old iron 
nine-pounder from a mud breastwork, only 
that his gun burst at the sixth discharge. And 
there was an old gentleman who shall be name- 
less, being too rich a mynheer to be lightly 
mentioned, who, in the battle of Whiteplains, 
being an excellent master of defence, parried 
a musket ball with a small sword, insomuch 
that he absolutely felt it whiz round the blade, 
and glance off at the hilt: in proof of which, 
he was ready at any time to show the sword, 
with the hilt a little bent. There were sever- 
al more that had been equally great in the 
field, not one of whom but was persuaded 
that he had a considerable hand in bringing 
the war to a happy termination. 

70 



But all these were nothing to the tales of 
ghosts and apparitions that succeeded. The 
neighborhood is rich in legendary treasures 
of the kind. Local tales and superstitions 
thrive best in these sheltered long-settled re- 
treats; but are trampled under foot by the 
shifting throng that forms the population of 
most of our country places. Besides, there 
is no encouragement for ghosts in most of our 
villages, for they have scarcely had time to 
finish their first nap, and turn themselves in 
their graves, before their surviving friends 
have travelled away from the nieghborhood; 
so that when they turn out at night to walk 
their rounds, they have no acquaintance left 
to call upon. This is perhaps the reason why 
we so seldom hear of ghosts except in our long- 
established Dutch communities. 

The immediate cause, however, of the prev- 
alence of supernatural stories in these parts 
was doubtless owing to the vicinity of Sleepy 
Hollow. There was a contagion in the very 
air that blew from that haunted region; 
breathed forth an atmosphere of dreams and 
fancies infecting all the land. Several of the 
Sleepy Hollow people were present at Van 
Tassel's, and, as usual, were doling out their 
wild and wonderful legends. Many dismal tales 
were told about funeral trains, and mourning 

71 



cries and wailings heard and seen about 
the great tree where the unfortunate Major 
Andre was taken, and which stood in the 
neighborhood. Some mention was made also 
of the woman in white, that haunted the dark 
glen at Raven Rock, and was often heard to 
shriek on winter nights before a storm, hav- 
ing perished there in the snow. The chief 
part of the stories, however, turned upon the 
favorite specter of Sleepy Hollow, the head- 
less horseman, who had been heard several 
times of late, patroling the country; and, it 
was said, tethered his horse nightly among the 
graves in the church-yard. 

The sequestered situation of this church 
seems always to have made it a favorite haunt 
of troubled spirits. It stands on a knoll, 
surrounded by locust-trees and lofty elms, 
from among which its decent whitewashed 
walls shine modestly forth, like Christian 
purity beaming through the shades of retire- 
ment. A gentle slope descends from it to a 
silver sheet of water, bordered by high trees, 
between which, peeps may be caught at the 
blue hills of the Hudson. To look upon its 
grass-grown yard, where the sunbeams seem 
to sleep so quietly, one would think that there 
at least the dead might rest in peace. On one 
side of the church extends a wide woody dell, 

n 



along which raves a large brook among brok- 
en rocks and trunks of fallen trees. Over a 
deep black part of the stream, not far from 
the church, was formerly thrown a wooden 
bridge; the road that led to it, and the bridge 
itself, were thickly shaded by overhanging 
trees, which cast a gloom about it, even in the 
daytime; but occasioned a fearful darkness 
at night. This was one of the favorite haunts 
of the headless horseman; and the place 
where he was most frequently encountered. 
The tale was told of old Brouwer, a most heret- 
ical disbeliever in ghosts, how he met the horse- 
man returning from his foray into Sleepy 
Hollow, and was obliged to get up behind him ; 
how they galloped over bush and brake, over 
hill and swamp, until they reached the bridge; 
when the horseman suddenly turned into a 
skeleton, threw old Brouwer into the brook, 
and sprang away over the tree-tops with a 
clap of thunder. 

This story was immediately matched by 
thrice marvelous adventure of Brom Bones, 
who made light of the galloping Hessian as an 
arrant jockey. He affirmed that, on return- 
ing one night from the neighboring village of 
Sing Sing, he had been overtaken by this 
midnight trooper; that he had offered to race 
with him for a bowl of punch, and should 

73 



have won it too, for Daredevil beat the gob- 
lin horse all hollow, but just as they came to 
the church bridge, the Hessian bolted, and 
vanished in a flash of fire. 

All these tales, told in that drowsy under- 
tone with which men talk in the dark, the 
countenances of the listeners only now and 
then receiving a casual gleam from the glare 
of a pipe, sank deep in the mind of Ichabod. 
He repaid them in kind with large extracts 
from his invaluable author, Cotton Mather, 
and added many marvelous events that had 
taken place in his native State of Connecti- 
cut, and fearful sights which he had seen in 
his nightly walks about Sleepy Hollow. 

The revel now gradually broke up. The 
old farmers gathered together their families 
in their wagons, and were heard for some 
time rattling along the hollow roads, and over 
the distant hills. Some of the damsels mount- 
ed on pillions behind their favorite swains, 
and their light-hearted laughter, mingling 
with the clatter of hoofs, echoed along the 
silent woodlands, sounding fainter and fainter 
until they gradually died away — and the late 
scene of noise and frolic was all silent and de- 
serted. Ichabod only lingered behind, ac- 
cording to the custom of country lovers, to 
have a tete-a-tete with the heiress, fully 

74 



convinced that he was now on the high road 
to success. 

Without looking to the right or left to no- 
tice the scene of rural wealth, on which he had 
so often gloated, he went straight to the stable, 
and with several hearty cuffs and kicks, roused 
his steed most uncourteously from the com- 
fortable quarters in which he was soundly 
sleeping, dreaming of mountains of corn and 
oats, and whole valleys of timothy and clover. 

It was the very witching time of night that 
Ichabod, heavy-hearted and crest-fallen, pur- 
sued his travel homewards, along the sides of 
the lofty hills which rise above Tarry town, 
and which he had traversed so cheerily in the 
afternoon. The hour was as dismal as him- 
self. Far below him, the Tappan Zee spread 
its dusky and indistinct waste of waters, with 
here and there the tall mast of a sloop, riding 
quietly at anchor under the land. In the 
dead hush of midnight, he could even hear the 
barking of the watchdog from the opposite 
shore of the Hudson; but it was so vague and 
faint as only to give an idea of his distance 
from this faithful companion of man. Now 
and then, too, the long-drawn crowing of a 
cock, accidentally awakened, would sound 
far, far off, from some farmhouse away among 
the hills — but it was like a dreaming sound in 

75 



his ear. No signs of life occurred near him, 
but occasionally the melancholy chirp of a 
cricket, or perhaps the gutteral twang of a 
bull-frog, from a neighboring marsh, as if 
sleeping uncomfortably, and turning sudden- 
ly in his bed. 

All the stories of ghosts and goblins that 
he had heard in the afternoon, now came crowd- 
ing upon his recollection. The night grew 
darker and darker; the stars seemed to sink 
deeper in the sky, and driving clouds occasion- 
ally hid them from his sight. He had never 
felt so lonely and dismal. He was, moreover, 
approaching the very place where many of 
the scenes of the ghost stories had been laid. 
In the centre of the road stood an enormous 
tulip tree, which towered like a giant above 
all the other trees of the neighborhood, and 
formed a kind of landmark. Its limbs were 
gnarled, and fantastic, large enough to form 
trunks for ordinary trees, twisting down al- 
most to the earth, and rising again into the 
air. It was connected with the tragical story 
of the unfortunate Andre, who had been tak- 
en prisoner hard by; and was universally 
known by the name of Major Andre's tree. 
The common people regarded it with mixture 
of respect and superstition, partly out of 
sympathy for the fate of its, ill-starrec] name- 

76 



sake, and partly from the tales of strai ,i 
sights and doleful lamentations told concern- 
ing it. 

As Ichabod approached this fearful tree, 
he began to whistle: he thought his whistle 
was answered — it was but a blast sweeping 
sharply through the dry branches. As he 
approached a little nearer, he thought he saw 
something white, hanging in the midst of the 
tree — he paused and ceased whistling; but 
on looking more narrowly, perceived that it 
was a place where the tree had been scathed 
by lightning, and the white wood laid bare. 
Suddenly he heard a groan — his teeth chattered 
and his knees smote against the saddle: it 
was but the rubbing of one huge bough upon 
another, as they were swayed about by the 
breeze. He passed the tree in safety, but 
new perils lay before him. 

The denouement and catastrophe are fully 
described on a following page (147) where Brom 
Bones threw the fatal pumpkin that eventful 
night. 



77 



his 



Rip Van Winkle 



Washington Irving now delights us with 
his story of Rip Van Winkle 



The following tale was found among the 
papers of the late Diedrich Knickerbocker, 
an old gentleman of New York, who was very 
curious in the Dutch history of the province, 
and the manners of the descendants from its 
primitive settlers. His historical researches, 
however, did not lie so much among books as 
among men; for the former are lamentably 
scanty on his favorite topics; whereas he 
found the old burgers, and still more their 
wives, rich in that legendary lore, so invaluable 
to true history. Whenever, therefore, he 
happened upon a genuine Dutch family, 
snugly shut up in its low-roofed farmhouse, 
under a spreading sycamore, he looked upon 
it as a little clasped volume of black letter, 
and studied it with the zeal of a bookworm. 

The result of all these researches was a 
history of the province during the reign of 

78 



the Dutch governors, which he published 
some years since. There have been various 
opinions as to the literary character of his 
work, and, to tell the truth, it is not a whit 
better than it should be. Its chief merit is 
its scrupulous accuracy, which indeed was a 
little questioned on its first appearance, but 
has since been completely established; and 
it is now admitted into all historical collec- 
tions, as a book of unquestionable authority. 
AVhoever has made a voyage up the Hudson 
must remember the Kaatskill mountains. 
They are a dismembered branch of the great 
Appalachian family, and are seen away to the 
west of the river, swelling up to a noble height, 
and lording it over the surrounding country. 
Every change of season, every change of weath- 
er, indeed, every hour of the day, produces some 
change in the magical hues and shapes of 
these mountains, and they are regarded by 
all the good wives, far and near, as perfect 
barometers. When the weather is fair and 
settled, they are clothed in blue and purple, 
and print their bold outlines on the clear even- 
ing sky; but, sometimes, when the rest of 
the landscape is cloudless, they will gather a 
hood of gray vapors about their summits, 
which, in the last rays of the setting sun, will 
glow and light up like a crown of glory. 

79 



At the foot of these fairy mountains, the 
voyager may have descried the light smoke 
curling up from a village, whose shingle-roofs 
gleam among the trees, just where the blue 
tints of the upland melt away into the fresh 
green of the nearer landscape. It is a little 
village of great antiquity, having been found- 
ed by some of the Dutch colonists, in the early 
times of the province, just abo\it the beginning 
of the government of the good Peter Stuyve- 
sant (may he rest in peace!), and there were 
some of the houses of the original settlers 
standing within a few years, built of small 
yellow bricks broulght from Holland, having 
latticed windows and gable fronts, surmounted 
with weathercocks. 

In the same village, and in one of these 
very houses (which, to tell the precise truth 
was sadly time worn and weatherbeaten), 
there lived many years since, while the country 
was yet a province of Great Britain, a simple, 
good-natured fellow of the name of Rip Van 
Winkle. He was a descendant of the Van 
Winkles who figured so gallantly in the chiv- 
alrous days of Peter Stuyvesant, and accom- 
panied him to the siege of Fort Christina. 
I have observed that he was a simple good- 
natured man; he was, moreover, a kind neigh- 
bor, and an obedient hen-pecked husband. 

80 



Indeed, to the latter circumstance might be 
owing that meekness of spirit which gained 
him such universal popularity; for those men 
are most apt to be obsequious and conciliat- 
ing abroad, who are under the discipline of 
shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, 
are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery 
furnace of domestic tribulation; and a cur- 
tain lecture is worth all the sermons in the 
world for teaching the virtues of patience and 
long-suffering. A termagant wife may, there- 
fore, in some respects, be considered a toler- 
able blessing; and if so, Rip Van Winkle was 
thrice blessed. 

Certain it is, that he was a great favorite 
among all the good wives of the village, who 
as usual, with the amiable sex, took his part 
in all family squabbles; and never failed, 
whenever they talked those matters over in 
their evening gossipings, to lay all the blame 
on Dame Van Winkle. The children of the 
village, too, would shout with joy whenever 
he approached. He assisted at their sports, 
made their playthings, taught them to fly 
kites and shoot marbles, and told them long 
stories of ghosts, witches, and Indians. When- 
ever he went dodging about the village, he 
was surrounded by a troop of them, hanging 
on his skirts, clambering on his back, and 

81 



playing a thousand tricks on him with im 
punity; and not a dog would bark at him 
throughout the neighborhood. 

The great error in Rip's composition was 
an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profit- 
able labor. It could not be from the want of 
assiduity or perseverance; for he would sit on 
a wet rock, with rod as long and heavy as a 
Tartar's lance, and fish all day without a 
murmur, even though he should not be en- 
couraged by a single nibble. He would carry 
a fowling-piece on his shoulder for hours to 
gether, trudging through woods and swamps 
and up hill and down dale, to shoot a few 
squirrels or wild pigeons. He would never 
refuse to assist a neighbor even in the rough 
est toil, and was a foremost man at all country 
frolics for husking Indian corn, or building 
stone fences; the women of the village, too, 
used to employ him to run their errands, and 
to do such little odd jobs as their less obliging 
husbands would not do for them. In a word 
Rip was ready to attend to anybody's busi- 
ness but his own; but as to doing family duty, 
and keeping his farm in order, he found it 
impossible. 

In fact, he declared it was of no use to work 
on his farm; it was the most pestilent little 
piece of ground in the whole country; every- 

82 



thing about it went wrong, and would go 
wrong, in spite of him. His fences were con- 
tinually falling to pieces; his cow would either 
go astray or get among the cabbages; weeds 
were sure to grow quicker in his fields than 
anywhere else; the rain always made a point 
of setting in just as he had some outdoor work 
to do; so that though his patrimonial estate 
had dwindled away under his management, 
acre by acre, until there was little more left 
than a mere patch of Indian corn and pota- 
toes, yet it was the worst conditioned farm 
in the neighborhood. 

Rip Van Winkle, however, was one of those 
happy mortals, of foolish, well-oiled disposi- 
tions, who take the world easy, eat white 
bread or brown, whichever can be got with 
least thought or trouble, and would rather 
starve on a penny than work for a pound. 
If left to himself, he would have whistled life 
away in perfect contentment; but his wife 
kept continually dinning in his ears about 
his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he 
was bringing on his family. Morning, noon 
and night, her tongue was incessantly going, 
and everything he said or did was sure to pro- 
duce a torrent of household eloquence. Rip 
had but one way of replying to all lectures of 
the kind, and that, by frequent use, had grown 

83 



into a habit. He shrugged his shoulders, 
shook his head, cast up his eyes, but said 
nothing. This, however, always provoked 
a fresh volley from his wife; so that he was 
fain to draw off his forces, and take to the 
outside of the house — the only side which, 
in truth, belongs to a henpecked husband. 

Rip's sole domestic adherent was his dog, 
Wolf, who was as much henpecked as his 
master; for Dame Van Winkle regarded them 
as companions in idleness, and even looked 
upon Wolf with an evil eye, as the cause of his 
master's going so often astray. True it is, 
in all points of spirit befitting an honorable 
dog, he was as courageous an animal as ever 
scoured the woods — but what courage can 
withstand the ever during and all-besetting 
terrors of a woman's tongue? The moment 
Wolf entered the house his crest fell, his tail 
dropped to the ground, or curled between his 
legs, he sneaked about with a gallows air, 
casting many a sidelong glance at Dame Van 
Winkle, and at the least flourish of a broom- 
stick or ladle, he would fly to the door with 
yelping precipitation. 

Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van 
Winkle as years of matrimony rolled on; a tart 
temper never mellows with age, and a sharp 
tongue is the only edged tool that grows 

84 



keener with constant use. For a long while he 
used to console himself, when driven from 
home, by frequenting a kind of perpetual 
club of the sages, philosophers, and other idle 
personages of the village; which held its ses- 
sions on a bench before a small inn, designated 
by a rubicund portrait of His Majesty George 
the Third. Here they used to sit in the shade 
through a long lazy summer's day, talking 
listlessly over village gossip, or telling endless 
sleepy stories about nothing. 

From even this stronghold the unlucky Rip 
was at length routed by his termagant wife, 
who would suddenly break in upon the tran- 
quillity of the assemblage and call the members 
all to naught; nor was that august personage, 
Nicholas Vedder himself, sacred from the 
daring tongue of this terrible virago, who 
charged him outright with encouraging her 
husband in habits of idleness. 

Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to des- 
pair; and his only alternative, to escape from 
the labor of the farm and clamor of his wife, 
was to take gun in hand and stroll away into 
the woods. Here he would sometimes seat 
himself at the foot of a tree, and share the con- 
tents of his wallet with Wolf, with whom he 
sympathized as a fellow-sufferer in perse- 
cution. "Poor Wolf," he would say, "thy 

85 



mistress leads thee a dog's life of it; but never 
mind, my lad, whilst I live thou shalt never 
want a friend to stand by thee!" Wolf would 
wag his tail, look wistfully in his master's face, 
and if dogs can feel pity I verily believe he re- 
ciprocated the sentiment with all his heart. 

In a long ramble of the kind on a fine autum- 
nal day, Rip had unconsciously scrambled to 
one of the highest parts of the Kaatskill moun- 
tains. He was after his favorite sport of 
squirrel shooting, and the still solitudes had 
echoed and re-echoed with the reports of his 
gun. Panting and fatigued, he threw him- 
self, late in the afternoon, on a green knoll, 
covered with mountain herbage, that crowned 
the brow of a precipice. From an opening 
between the trees he could overlook all the low- 
er country for many a mile of rich woodland. 
He saw at a distance the lordly Hudson, far, 
far below him, moving on its silent but majes- 
tic course, with the reflection of a purple 
cloud, or the sail of a lagging bark, here and 
there sleeping on its glassy bosom, and at last 
losing itself in the blue Highlands. 

On the other side he looked down into a 
deep mountain glen, wild, lonely, and shagged, 
the bottom filled with fragments from the 
impending cliffs, and scarcely lighted by the 
reflected rays of the setting sun. For some 

86 



time Rip lay musing on this scene; evening 
was gradually advancing; the mountains be- 
gan to throw their long blue shadows over the 
valleys; he saw that it would be dark long be- 
fore he could reach the village, and he heaved 
a heavy sign when he thought of encounter- 
ing the terrors of Dame Van Winkle. 

As he was about to descend, he heard a 
voice from a distance, hallooing, "Rip Van 
Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!" He looked 
round, but could see nothing but a crow wing- 
ing its solitary flight across the mountain. He 
thought his fancy must have deceived him, 
and turned again to descend, when he heard 
the same cry ring through the still evening 
air: "Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!"- 
at the same time Wolf bristled up his back, 
and giving a low growl, skulked to his master's 
side, looking fearfully down into the glen. 
Rip now felt a vague apprehension stealing 
over him; he looked anxiously in the same 
direction, and perceived a strange figure slow- 
ly toiling up the rocks, and bending under the 
weight of something he carried on his back. 
He was surprised to see any human being in 
this lonely and unfrequented place, but sup- 
posing it to be some of the neighborhood in 
need of his assistance, he hastened down to 
yield it. 

87 



On nearer approach he was still more sur- 
prised at the singularity of the stranger's 
appearance. He was a short, square-built 
old fellow, with thick bushy hair, and a griz- 
zled beard. His dress was of the antique 
Dutch fashion — a cloth jerkin strapped round 
the waist — several pair of breeches, the outer 
one of ample volume, decorated with rows of 
buttons down the sides, and bunches at the 
knees. He bore on his shoulder a stout keg, 
that seemed full of liquor, and made signs for 
Rip to approach and assist him with the load. 
Though rather shy and distrustful of this 
new acquaintance, Rip complied with his 
usual alacrity; and mutually relieving one 
another, they clambered up a narrow gully, 
apparently the dry bed of a mountain torrent. 
As they ascended, Rip every now and then 
heard long rolling peals, like distant thunder, 
that seemed to issue out of a deep ravine, or 
rather cleft, between lofty rocks, toward 
which their rugged path conducted. He paus- 
ed for an instant, but supposing it to be the 
muttering of one of those transient thunder- 
showers which often take place in mountain 
heights, he proceeded. Passing through the 
ravine, they came to a hollow, like a small am- 
phitheatre, surrounded by perpendicular prec- 
ipices, over the brinks of which impending 

88 



trees shot their branches, so that you only 
caught glimpses of the azure sky and the 
bright evening cloud. During the whole time 
Rip and his companion had labored on in si- 
lence; for though the former marvelled great- 
ly what could be the object of carrying a keg 
of liquor up this wild mountain, yet there was 
something strange and incomprehensible about 
the unknown, that inspired awe and checked 
familiarity. 

On entering the amphitheatre, new objects 
of wonder presented themselves. On a level 
spot in the centre was a company of odd-look- 
ing personages playing at nine-pins. They 
were dressed in a quaint outlandish fashion; 
some wore short doublets, others jerkins, with 
long knives in their belts, and most of them 
had enormous breeches, of similar style with 
that of the guide's. Their visages, too, were 
peculiar: one had a large beard, broad face, 
and small piggish eyes: the face of another 
seemed to consist entirely of nose, and was 
surmounted by a white sugarloaf hat set off 
with a little red cock's tail. They all had 
beards, of various shapes and colors. There 
was one who seemed to be the commander. He 
was a stout old gentleman, with a weather- 
beaten countenance; he wore a laced doub- 
let, broad belt and hanger, high-crowned hat 

89 



and feather, red stockings, and high-heeled 
shoes, with roses in them. The whole group 
reminded Rip of the figures in an old Flemish 
painting, in the parlor of Dominie Van Shaick, 
the village parson, and which had been brought 
over from Holland at the time of the settle- 
ment. 

What seemed particularly odd to Rip was, 
that though these folks were evidently amus- 
ing themselves, yet they maintained the grav- 
est faces, the most mysterious silence, and 
were, withal, the most melancholy party of 
pleasure he had ever witnessed. Nothing in- 
terrupted the stillness of the scene but the 
noise of the balls, which, whenever they were 
rolled, echoed along the mountains like rum- 
bling peals of thunder. 

As Rip and his companion approached them 
they suddenly desisted from their play, and 
stared at him with such fixed statue-like 
gaze, and such a strange, uncouth, lack-lustre 
countenances, that his heart turned within 
him, and his knees smote together. His 
companion now emptied the contents of the 
keg into large flagons, and made signs to him 
to wait upon the company. He obeyed with 
fear and trembling; they quaffed the liquor 
in profound silence, and then returned to their 
game. 

90 



By degrees Rip's awe and apprehension 
subsided. He even ventured, when no eye 
was fixed upon him, to taste the beverage, 
which he found had much of the flavor of ex- 
cellent Hollands. He was naturally a thirsty 
soul, and was soon tempted to repeat the 
draught. One taste provoked another; and 
he reiterated his visits to the flagon so often 
that at length his senses were overpowered, 
his eyes swam in his head, his head gradually 
declined, and he fell into a deep sleep. 

On waking, he found himself on the green 
knoll when he had first seen the old man of the 
glen. He rubbed his eyes — it was a bright 
sunny morning. The birds were hopping 
and twittering among the bushes, and the eagle 
was wheeling aloft, and breasting the pure 
mountain breeze. "Surely," thought Rip, "I 
have not slept here all night." He recalled 
the occurrences before he fell asleep. The 
strange man with a keg of liquor — the mountain 
ravine — the wild retreat among the rocks — 
the woe-begone party at nine-pins — the flagon 
— "Oh! that flagon! that wicked flagon!" 
thought Rip — "what excuse shall I make to 
Dame Van Winkle!" 

He looked round for his gun, but in place 
of the clean well-oiled fowling-piece, he found 
an old firelock lying by him, the barrel 

91 



encrusted with rust, the lock falling off, and 
the stock worm-eaten. He now suspected that 
the grave roysters of the mountain had put a 
trick upon him, and, having dosed him with 
liquor, had robbed him of his gun. Wolf, 
too, had disappeared, but he might have 
strayed away after a squirrel or partridge. 
He whistled after him and shouted his name, 
but all in vain; the echoes repeated his whistle 
and shout, but no dog was to be seen. 

He determined to revisit the scene of the 
last evening's gambol, and if he met with any 
of the party, to demand his dog and gun. As 
he rose to walk, he found himself stiff in the 
joints, and wanting in his usual activity. 
"These mountain beds do not agree with me," 
thought Rip, "and if this frolic should lay 
me up with a fit of the rheumatism, I shall 
have a blessed time with Dame Van Winkle." 
With some difficulty he got down into the glen : 
he found the gully up which he and his com- 
panion had ascended the preceding evening; 
but to his astonishment a mountain stream 
was now foaming down it, leaping from rock 
to rock, and filling the glen with babbling 
murmurs. He, however, made shift to scram- 
ble up its sides, working his toilsome way 
through thickets of birch, sassafras, and witch 
hazel, and sometimes tripped up or entrangled 

92 






by the wild grapevines that twisted their coils 
or tendrils from tree to tree, and spread a kind 
of network in his path. 

At length he reached to where the ravine 
had opened through the cliffs to the amphi- 
theatre; but no traces of such opening re- 
mained. The rocks presented a high im- 
penetrable wall over which the torrent came 
tumbling in a sheet of feathery foam, and fell 
into a broad deep basin, black from the shad- 
ows of the surrounding forest. Here, then, 
poor Rip was brought to a stand. He again 
called and whistled after his dog; he was only 
answered by the cawing of a flock of idle 
crows, sporting high in air about a dry tree 
that overhung a sunny precipice; and who, 
secure in their elevation, seemed to look 
down and scoff at the poor man's perplexities. 
What was to be done? the morning was pass- 
ing away, and Rip felt famished for want of 
his breakfast. He grieved to give up his dog 
and gun; he dreaded to meet his wife; but 
it would not do to starve among the mountains. 
He shook his head, shouldered the rusty fire- 
lock, and, with a heart full of trouble and 
anxiety, turned his steps homeward. 

As he approached the village he met a num- 
ber of people, but none whom he knew, which 
somewhat surprised him, for he thought him- 

93 



self acquainted with every one in the country 
round. Their dress, too, was of a different 
fashion from that to which he was accustomed. 
They all stared at him with equal marks of 
surprise, and whenever they cast their eyes 
upon him, invariably stroked their chins. 
The constant recurrence of this gesture in- 
duced Rip, involuntarily, to do the same, 
when to his astonishment, he found his beard 
had grown a foot long! 

He had now entered the skirts of the village. 
A troop of strange children ran at his heels, 
hooting after him, and pointing at his gray 
beard. The dogs, too, not one of which he 
recognized for an old acquaintance, barked at 
him as he passed. 

The very village was altered; it was larger 
and more populous. There were rows of 
houses which he had never seen before, and 
those which had been his familiar haunts had 
disappeared. Strange names were over the 
doors — strange faces at the windows — every- 
thing was strange. His mind now misgave 
him; he began to doubt whether both he and 
the world around him were not bewitched. 
Surely this was his native village, which he had 
left but the day before. There stood the 
Kaatskill mountains — there ran the silver 
Hudson at a distance — there was every hill 

94 



and dale precisely as it had always been — Rip 
was sorely perplexed — "That flagon last night," 
thought he, "has addled my poor head sadly!" 

It was with some difficulty that he found 
the way to his own house, which he approach- 
ed with silent awe, expecting every moment 
to hear the shrill voice of Dame Van Winkle. 
He found the house gone to decay — the roof 
fallen in, the windows shattered, and the doors 
off the hinges. A half -starved dog that looked 
like Wolf was skulking about. Rip called 
him by name, but the cur snarled, showed his 
teeth, and passed on. This was an unkind 
cut indeed — "My very dog," sighed poor Rip, 
"has forgotten me!" 

He entered the house, which, to tell the 
truth, Dame Van Winkle had always kept in 
neat order. It was empty, forlorn, and ap- 
parently abandoned. This desolateness over- 
came all his connubial fears — he called loudly 
for his wife and children — the lonely chambers 
rang for a moment with his voice, and then 
all again was silence. 

He now hurried forth, and hastened to his 
old resort, the village inn — but it too was 
gone. A large rickety wooden building stood 
in its place, with great gaping windows, some 
of them broken and mended with old hats and 
petticoats, and over the door was painted, 

95 



"the Union Hotel, by Jonathan Doolittle." 
Instead of the great tree that used to shelter 
the quiet little Dutch inn of yore, there now 
was reared a tall naked pole, with something 
on the top that looked like a red night-cap, 
and from it was fluttering a flag, on which 
was a singular assemblage of stars and stripes 
— all this was strange and incomprehensible. 
He recognized on the sign, however, the ruby 
face of King George, under which he had 
smoked so many a peaceful pipe; but even 
this was singularly metamorphosed. The red 
coat was changed for one of blue and buff, a 
sword was held in the hand instead of a scep- 
tre, the head was decorated with a cocked hat, 
and underneath was painted in large charac- 
ters, GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

There was, as usual, a crowd of folk about 
the door, but none that Rip recollected. The 
very character of the people seemed changed. 
There was a busy, bustling, disputatious tone 
about it, instead of the accustomed phlegm 
and drowsy tranquillity. He looked in vain 
for the sage Nicholas Vedder, with his broad 
face, double chin, and fair long pipe, uttering 
clouds of tobacco smoke instead of idle speech- 
es; or Van Brummel, the schoolmaster, doling 
forth the contents of an ancient newspaper. 
In place of these, a lean, bilious-looking fel- 

96 



low, with his pockets full of handbills, was 
haranguing vehemently about rights of citi- 
zens — elections — members of congress — lib- 
erty — Bunker's Hill — heroes of seventy-six — 
and other words, which were a perfect Baby- 
lonish jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle. 
The appearance of Rip, with his long griz- 
zled beard, his rusty fowling-piece, his uncouth 
dress, and an army of women and children at 
his heels, soon attracted the attention of the 
tavern politicians. They crowded round him 
eying him from head to foot with great curi- 
osity. The orator bustled up to him, and 
drawing him partly aside, inquired "on which 
side he voted?" Rip stared in vacant stu- 
pidity. Another short but busy little fellow 
pulled him by the arm, and, rising on tiptoe, 
inquired in his ear, "Whether he was Federal 
or Democrat?" Rip was equally at a loss to 
comprehend the question; when a knowing, 
self-important old gentleman, in sharp cocked 
hat, made his way through the crowd, putting 
them to the right and left with his elbows as 
he passed and planting himself before Van 
Winkle, with one arm a-kimbo, the other rest- 
ing on his cane, his keen eyes and sharp hat 
penetrating, as it were, into his very soul, 
demanded in an austere tone, "what brought 
him to the election with a gun on his shoulder, 

97 



and a mob at his heels, and whether he meant 
to breed a riot in the village?" — "Alas! gen- 
tlemen," cried Rip, somewhat dismayed, "I am 
a poor quiet man, a native of the place, and 
a loyal subject of the king, God bless him!" 

Here a general shout burst from the by- 
standers — "A tory! a tory! a spy! a refugee! 
hustle him! away with him!" It was with 
great difficulty that the self-important man in 
the cocked hat restored order; and, having as- 
sumed a tenfold austerity of brow, demanded 
again of the unknown culprit, what he came 
there for, and whom he was seeking? The 
poor man humbly assured him that he meant 
no harm, but merely came there in search of 
some of his neighbors, who used to keep about 
the tavern. 

"Well — who are they? — name them." 

Rip bethought himself a moment, and in- 
quired, "Where's Nicholas Vedder?" 

There was a silence for a little while, when 
an old man replied, in a thin piping voice, 
"Nicholas Vedder! why, he is dead and gone 
these eighteen years! There was a wooden 
tombstone in the churchyard that used to tell 
all about him, but that's rotten and gone too." 

"Where's Brom Dutcher?" 

"Oh, he went off to the army in the begin- 
ning of the war; some say he was killed at the 

98 



storming of Stony Point — others say he was 
drowned in a squall at the foot of Antony's 
Nose. I don't know — he never came back 
again." 

"Where's Van Bummel, the schoolmaster?" 

"He went off to the war too, was a great 
militia general, and is now in congress." 

Rip's heart died away at hearing of these 
sad changes in his home and friends, and find- 
ing himself thus alone in the world. Every 
answer puzzled him too, by treating of such 
enormous lapses of time, and of matters which 
he could not understand war — congress — 
Stony Point; — he had no courage to ask after 
any more friends, but cried out in despair, 
"Does nobody here know Rip Van Winkle?" 

"Oh, Rip Van Winkle!" exclaimed two or 
three, "Oh, to be sure! that's Rip Van Winkle 
yonder, leaning against the tree." 

Rip looked, and beheld a precise counter- 
part of himself, as he we at up the mountain 
apparently as lazy, and certainly as ragged. 
The poor fellow was now completely con- 
founded. He doubted his own identity, and 
whether he was himself or another man. In 
the midst of his bewilderment, the man in the 
cocked hat demanded who he was, and what 
was his name? 

"God knows," exclaimed he, at his wits' 

99 



end; "I'm not myself — I'm somebody else — 
that's me yonder — no — that's somebody else 
got into my shoes — I was myself last night, 
but I fell asleep on the mountain, and they've 
changed my gun, and everything's changed, 
and I can't tell what's my name, or who I am!" 

The bystanders began now to look at each 
other, nod, wink significantly, and tap their 
fingers against their foreheads. There was 
a whisper, also, about securing the gun, and 
keeping the old fellow from doing mischief, 
at the very suggestion of which the self-impor- 
tant man in the cocked hat retired with some 
precipitation. At this critical moment a fresh 
comely woman pressed through the throng to 
get a peek at the gray-bearded man. She had 
a chubby child in her arms, which, frightened 
at his looks, began to cry. "Hush, Rip," 
cried she, "hush, you little fool; the old man 
won't hurt you." The name of the child, 
the air of the mother, the tone of her voice, 
all awakened a train of recollections in his 
mind. " What is your name, my good woman?' 
asked he. 

"Judith Gardenier." 

"And your father's name?" 

"Ah, poor man, Rip Van Winkle was his 
name, but it's twenty years since he went 
away from home with his gun, and never has 

100 



been heard of since — his dog came home with- 
out him; but whether he shot himself, or was 
carried away by the Indians, nobody can tell. 
I was then but a little girl." 

Rip had but one question more to ask; but 
he put it with a faltering voice: 

"Where's your mother?" 

"Oh, she too had died but a short time since; 
she broke a blood-vessel in a fit of passion at 
a New England peddler." 

There was a drop of comfort, at least, in this 
intelligence. The honest man could contain 
himself no longer. He caught his daughter and 
her child in his arms. "I am your father!" 
cried he — "Young Rip Van Winkle once — 
old Rip Van Winkle now! — Does nobody know 
poor Rip Van Winkle?" 

All stood amazed, until an old woman, totter- 
ing out from among the crowd, put her hand 
to her brow, and peering under it in his face 
for a moment, exclaimed, "Sure enough! it 
is Rip Van Winkle — it is himself! Welcome 
home again, old neighbor — Why, where have 
you been these twenty long years?" 

Rip's story was soon told, for the whole 
twenty years had been to him but as one 
night. The neighbors stared when they heard 
it; some were seen to wink at each other, and 
put their tongues in their cheeks: and the 

101 



self-important man in the cocked hat, who, when 
the alarm was over, had returned to the field, 
screwed down the corners of his mouth, and 
shook his head — upon which there was a gen- 
eral shaking of the head throughout the assem- 
blage. 

It was determined, however, to take the 
opinion of old Peter Vanderdonk, who was 
seen slowly advancing up the road. He was 
a descendant of the historian of that name, 
who wrote one of the earliest accounts of the 
province. Peter was the most ancient in- 
habitant of the village, and well versed in all 
the wonderful events and traditions of the 
neighborhood. He recollected Rip at once, 
and corroborated his story in the most satis- 
factory manner. He assured the company 
that it was a fact, handed down from his an- 
cestor the historian, that the Kaatskill moun- 
tains had always been haunted by strange be- 
ings. That it was affirmed that the great 
Hendrick Hudson, the first discoverer of the 
river and country, kept a kind of vigil there 
every twenty years, with his crew of the Half- 
moon; being permitted in this way to revisit 
the scenes of his enterprise, and keep a guard- 
ian eye upon the river, and the great city 
called by his name. That his father had 
once seen them in their old Dutch dresses 

102 



playing at nine-pins in a hollow of the moun- 
tains; and that he himself had heard, one sum- 
mer afternoon, the sound of their balls, like 
distant peals of thunder. 

To make a long story short, the company 
broke up, and returned to the more important 
concerns of the election. Rip's daughter took 
him home to live with her; she had a snug, 
well-furnished house, and a stout cheery farmer 
for a husband, whom Rip recollected for one 
of the urchins that used to climb upon his 
back. As to Rip's son and heir, who was the 
ditto of himself, seen leaning against the tree, 
he was employed to work on the farm; but 
evinced an hereditary disposition to attend 
to any thing else but his business. 

Rip now resumed his old walks and habits; 
he soon found many of his former cronies, 
though all rather the worse for wear and tear 
of time; and preferred making friends among 
the rising generation, with whom he soon 
grew into great favor. 

Having nothing to do at home, and being 
arrived at that happy age when a man can be 
idle with impunity, he took his place once 
more on the bench at the inn door, and was 
reverenced as one of the patriarchs of the vil- 
lage, and a chronicle of the old times "before 
the war." It was some time before he could 

103 



get into the regular track of gossip or could be 
made to comprehend the strange events that had 
taken place during his torpor. How that there 
had been a revolutionary war — that the coun- 
try had thrown off the yoke of old England — 
and that, instead of being a subject of his 
Majesty George the Third, he was now a free 
citizen of the United States. Rip, in fact, 
was no politician ; the changes of states and 
empires made but little impression on him; 
but there was one species of despotism under 
which he had long groaned, and that was — 
petticoat government. Happily that was at 
an end; he had got his neck out of the yoke 
of matrimony, and could go in and out when- 
ever he pleased, without dreading the tyranny 
of Dame Van Winkle. Whenever her name 
was mentioned, however, he shook his head, 
shrugged his shoulders, and cast up his eyes; 
which might pass either for an expression of 
resignation to his fate, or joy at his deliverance. 
He used to tell his story to every stranger 
that arrived at Mr. Doolittle's hotel. He was 
observed, at first, to vary on some points every 
time he told it, which was, doubtless, owing 
to his having so recently awaked. It at last 
settled down precisely to the tale I have re- 
lated, and not a man, woman, or child in the 
neighborhood, but knew it by heart. Some 

104 



always pretended to doubt the reality of it, 
and insisted that Rip had been out of his head, 
and that this was one point on which he al- 
ways remained flighty. The old Dutch in- 
habitants, however, almost universally gave 
it full credit. Even to this day they never 
hear a thunderstorm of a summer afternoon 
about the Kaatskill, but they say Hendrick 
Hudson and his crew are at their game of 
nine-pins in the neighborhood, when life hangs 
heavy on their hands, that they might have a 
quieting draught out of Rip Van Winkle's 
flagon. 

The story of Rip Van Winkle may seem in- 
credible to many, but nevertheless I give it 
my full belief, for I know the vicinity of our 
old Dutch settlements to have been very sub- 
ject to marvelous events and appearances. 
Indeed, I have heard many stranger stories 
than this, in the villages along the Hudson; 
all of which were too well authenticated to 
admit of a doubt. I have even talked with 
Rip Van Winkle myself, who, when last I 
saw him, was a venerable old man, and so per- 
fectly rational and consistent on every other 
point, that I think no conscientious person 
could refuse to take this into the bargain; 
nay, I have seen a certificate on the subject 
taken before a country justice and signed 

105 



with a cross, in the justice's own handwriting. 
The story, therefore, is beyond the possibility 
of doubt. 

The Kaatsberg, or Catskill mountains, have 
always been a region full of fable. The In- 
dians considered them the abode of spirits, 
who influenced the weather, spreading sun- 
shine or clouds over the landscape, and send- 
ing good or bad hunting seasons. They were 
ruled by an old squaw spirit, said to be their 
mother. She dwelt on the highest peak of 
the Catskill, and had charge of the doors of 
day and night to open and shut them at the 
proper hour. She hung up the new moons in 
the skies, and cut up the old ones into stars. 
In times of drought, if properly propitiated, 
she would spin light summer clouds out of 
cobwebs and morning dew, and send them off 
from the crest of the mountain, flake after 
flake, like flakes of carded cotton, to float in 
the air; until, dissolved by the heat of the 
sun, they would fall in gentle showers, caus- 
ing the grass to spring, the fruits to ripen, and 
the corn to grow an inch an hour. If dis- 
pleased, however, she would brew up clouds 
black as ink, sitting in the midst of them like 
a bottle-bellied spider in the midst of its web; 
and when these clouds broke, woe betide the 
valleys! 

106 






In old times, say the Indian traditions, 
there was a kind of Manitou or Spirit, who 
kept about the wildest recesses of the Cats- 
kill mountains, and took a mischievous pleas- 
ure in wreaking all kinds of evils and vexa- 
tions upon the red men. Sometimes he would 
assume the form of a bear, a panther, or a 
deer, lead the bewildered hunter a weary 
chase through tangled forests and among 
ragged rocks; and then spring off with a loud 
ho! ho! leaving him aghast on the brink of a 
beetling precipice or raging torrent. 

The favorite abode of this Manitou is still 
shown. It is a great rock or cliff on the lone- 
liest part of the mountains, and from the flow- 
ering vines which clamber about it, and the 
wild flowers which abound in its neighborhood 
is known by the name of the Garden Rock. 
Near the foot of it is a small lake, the haunt 
of the solitary bittern, with water-snakes 
basking in the sun on the leaves of the pond- 
lilies which lie on the surface. This place was 
held in great awe by the Indians, insomuch 
that the boldest hunter would not pursue his 
game within its precincts. Once upon a time, 
however, a hunter who had lost his way, pen- 
etrated to the garden rock, where he beheld a 
number of gourds placed in the crotches of 
trees. One of these he seized and made off with 

107 



it; but in the hurry of his retreat he let it fall 
among the rocks, when a great stream gushed 
forth, which washed him away and swept 
him down precipices, where he was dashed to 
pieces, and the stream made its way to the 
Hudson, and continues to flow to the present 
day; being the identical stream known by 
the name of the Kaaters-kill. 



108 



Sunnyside 

The Home of Many Memories 



As our " Washington Irving" sails the bright 
waters of Tappan Zee he speaks familiarly 
of his dear Sunnyside as "The Roost" — the 
"Wolfert Roost" of old Baltus Van Tassel 
and his fair daughter Katrina. Where Icha- 
bod Crane lingered that eventful night after 
all the guests were gone which preceded his 
dramatic ride with the "Headless Horseman" 
referred to more fully in his "Legend of Sleepy 
Hollow." 

Irving aptly described Sunnyside as "made 
up of gable-ends, and full of angles and cor- 
ners as an old cocked hat. It is said, in fact, 
to have been modeled after the hat of Peter 
the Headstrong, as the Escurial of Spain was 
fashioned after the gridiron of the blessed St. 
Lawrence." Wolfert's Roost (Roost sig- 
nifying Rest) took its name from Wolfert 

109 



Acker, a former owner. It consisted original- 
ly of ten acres when purchased by Irving in 
1855, but several acres were afterwards added. 
With great humor Irving put above the porch 
entrance "George Harvey, Boum'r," Bou- 
meister being an old Dutch word for architect. 
A storm- worn weathercock, "which once bat- 
tled with the wind on the top of the Stadt 
House of New Amsterdam in the time of Peter 
Stuyvesant, erects his crest on the gable, and 
a gilded horse in full gallop, once the weather- 
cock of the great Van der Heyden palace of 
Albany, glitters in the sunshine, veering with 
every breeze, on the peaked turret over the 
portal." 

About fifty years ago a cutting of Walter 
Scott's favorite ivy at Melrose Abbey was 
transported across the Atlantic, and trained 
over the porch of "Sunnyside," by the hand 
of Mrs. Renwick, daughter of Rev. Andrew 
Jeffrey of Lochmaben, known in girlhood as 
the "Bonnie Jessie" of Annandale, or the 
"Blue-eyed Lassie" of Robert Burns: — a grace- 
ful tribute, from the shrine of Waverly to the 
nest of Knickerbocker: 

A token of friendship immortal 

With Washington Irving returns! — 

Scott's ivy entwined o'er its portal 
By the Blue-eyed Lassie of Burns. 

110 



Scott's cordial greeting at Abbotsford, and 
his persistence in getting Murray to reconsid- 
er the publication of the "Sketch Book," 
which he had previously declined, were never 
forgotten by Irving. It was during a critical 
period of his literary career, and the kindness 
of the Great Magician, in directing early at- 
tention to his genius, is still cherished by 
every reader of the " Sketch Book" from Man- 
hattan to San Francisco. The hearty grasp 
of the minstrel at the gateway of Abbotsford 
was in reality a warm handshake to a wider 
brotherhood beyond the sea. 

While he was building "Sunnyside" a 
letter came from Daniel Webster, then Sec- 
retary of State, appointing him minister to 
Spain. It was unexpected and unsolicited, 
and Webster remarked that day to a friend: 
"Washington Irving today will be the most 
surprised man in America." Irving had al- 
ready shown diplomatic ability in London in 
promoting the settlement of the "Northwest- 
ern Boundary," and his appointment was re- 
ceived with universal favor. Then as now 
Sunnyside was already a Mecca for travel- 
ers and, among many well known to fame, 
was a young man, afterwards Napoleon the 
Third. Referring to his visit, Irving wrote in 
1853: "Napoleon and Eugenie, Emperor and 

ill 



Empress! The one I have had as a guest at my 
cottage, the other I have held as a pet child 
upon my knee in Granada. The last I saw 
of Eugenie Montijo, she was one of the reign- 
ing belles of Madrid; now, she is upon the 
throne, launched from a returnless shore, upon 
a dangerous sea, infamous for its tremendous 
shipwrecks. Am I to live to see the catas- 
trophe of her career, and the end of this sud- 
denly conjured up empire, which seems to be 
of such stuff as dreams are made of! I con- 
fess my personal acquaintance with the in- 
dividuals in this historical romance gives me 
uncommon interest in it but I consider it 
stamped with danger and instability, and as 
liable to extravagant vicissitudes as one of 
Dumas' novels." A wonderful prophecy 
completely fulfilled in the short space of sev- 
enteen years. 

Tappan Zee, at this point, is a little more 
than two miles wide and over the beautiful 
expanse Irving has thrown a wondrous charm. 
There is, in fact, "magic in the web" of all his 
works. A few modern critics, lacking appre- 
ciation alike for humor and genius, may re- 
gard his essays as a thing of the past, but as 
long as the Mahicanituk, the ever-flowing 
Hudson, pours its waters to the sea, as long as 
Rip Van Winkle sleeps in the blue Catskills 

112 



or the "Headless Horseman" rides at midnight 
along the Old Post Road en route for Teller's 
Point, so long will the writings of Washington 
Irving be remembered and cherished. We 
somehow feel the reality of every legend he 
has given us. The spring bubbling up near 
his cottage was brought over, as he gravely 
tells us, in a churn from Holland by one of the 
old time settlers, and we are half inclined to 
believe it ; and no one ever thinks of doubting 
that the "Flying Dutchman," Mynheer Van 
Dam, has been rowing for two hundred years 
and never made a port. It is in fact still 
said by the old inhabitants, that often in the 
soft twilight of summer evenings, when the 
sea is like glass and the opposite hills throw 
their shadows across it, that the low vigorous 
pull of oars is heard but no boat is seen. 



113 



The Dreamland of the Pocantico 
and Sleepy Hollow 



The old time Dreamland of Washington 
Irving has been consecrated since 1859 as 
his resting place where worshippers come 
with reverend footsteps to read on the plain 
slab this simple inscription: "Washington 
Irving, born April 3, 1783. Died November 
28, 1859," and recall Longfellow's beautiful 
lines : 

"Here lies the gentle humorist, who died 
In the bright Indian Summer of his fame, 
A simple stone, with but a date and name, 

Marks his secluded resting-place beside 

The river that he loved and glorified. 
Here in the autumn of his days he came, 
But the dry leaves of life were all aflame 

With tints that brightened and were multiplied. 

How sweet a life was his, how sweet a death; 

Living to wing with mirth the weary hours, 
Or with romantic tales the heart to cheer ; 

Dying to leave a memory like the breath 

Of Summers full of sunshine and of showers, 
A grief and gladness in the atmosphere." 

114 



Sleepy Hollow Church, like Sunnyside, is 
hidden away from the steamer tourist by 
summer foliage. Just before reaching King- 
ston Point lighthouse, a view, looking north- 
east up the little bay to the right, will sometimes 
give the outline of the building. Beyond this 
a tall granite shaft, erected by the Dele van 
family, is generally quite distinctly seen, and 
this is near the grave of Irving. A light- 
house, built in 1883, marks the point where 
the Pocantico or Sleepy Hollow Creek joins 
the Hudson: 

Pocantico 's hushed waters glide 

Through Sleepy Hollow's haunted ground, 

And whisper to the listening tide 

The name carved o'er one lowly mound. 



115 



Washington Irving at Home 
and Abroad 



His writings, journeys, associations and his 
life, by Wallace Bruce 



The memory of Washington Irving rests 
like a ray of sunshine upon the pages of our 
early history. Born in 1783, at the close of 
the great struggle for Independence, his life 
of seventy-six years marks a period of growth 
and material progress, the pages of which we 
have just been turning, and it is peculiarly 
fitting to consider at this time in the morning 
of our Twentieth Century the life and ser- 
vices of our sweetest writer — the best rep- 
resentative of our early culture. 

It is my purpose to consider his writings, 
his associations, and his life, and I take up his 
works in the order in which they were written, 
as in this way we trace the natural develop- 
ment of the writer and the man. 

117 



"Knickerbocker," his earliest work, writ- 
ten at the age of twenty-six, bears the same 
relation to his later works as "Pickwick," the 
first heir of Dickens' invention, to his novels 
that follow. And there is another point of 
similarity in the fact that "Knickerbocker" 
and "Pickwick" both outgrew the original 
design of the authors : neither Irving nor Dick- 
ens, when he took pen in hand, had any idea 
of the character of the work he was to produce. 
The philosophic and benevolent Pickwick 
was barely rescued from being the head of a 
Nimrod Hunting Club, with a character cut 
to fit a series of drawings that had been pur- 
chased from the wife of a needy artist by a 
second-class publishing house in London; and 
the idea of "Knickerbocker" at first was sim- 
ply to parody a small hand-book which had 
recently appeared, entitled "A Picture of 
New York." Following this plan, a humor- 
ous description of the early governors of New 
Amsterdam was intended merely as a preface 
to the customs and institutions of the city 
but like Buckle's "History of Civilization," 
the preface became the body of the book, and 
all idea of a parody was early and happily 
abandoned. The rise and fall of the Dutch 
domination presented a subject of poetic 
unity. In the character of the pseudo- 

118 



historian we have the representative of a race 
whose customs were fast passing away, and 
the serio-comic nature of the work is intensi- 
fied, and as it were italicized, at the very out- 
set by notices in the New York Evening Post 
and other journals calling attention to the 
mysterious disappearance of Diedrich Knick- 
erbocker. 

Never was any volume more happily in- 
troduced. Before we turn a single page of the 
book we have an idea of the veritable writer. 
We see him the representative of a noble Dutch 
family — first cousin of the renowned Con- 
gressman of Schaghticoke. We become in- 
terested in the mystery that surrounds him; 
in fact, the great charm of the book is in the 
semi-reality, or assumed personality, of Deid- 
rich Knickerbocker. The portrait of Don 
Quixote, so familiar to every one, starting out 
from La Mancha to redress the wrongs of the 
world, is not more clearly drawn and has no 
more reality in our minds than the historian 
of New Amsterdam, with his silver shoe- 
buckles and cocked hat, trudging along the 
old post-road from village to village. But 
there is this difference in the mind of the read- 
er: in the great satire of Cervantes there is 
an element of sadness. We see a crazed old 
gentleman going out in quest of adventures 

119 



exciting our pity, almost excusing the para- 
dox of Lord Byron, "The saddest of all tales, 
and more sad because it makes us laugh;" 
but here there is only a mild sort of insanity 
about the old gentleman with his books and 
papers, wandering off on long excursions that 
touches our humor without exciting our sym- 
pathy. We see as it were only a touch of the 
same malady which belongs to all writers 
"seeking after immortality;" and, by the way, 
the books of humor we have here associated — 
"Pickwick," "Don Quixote," and "Knicker- 
bocker" — belong to the same family, can be 
profitably studied together, and ought to 
stand upon the same shelf in our libraries. 
The philosopher Hume said "a turn for 
humor was worth to him ten thousand a year," 
and perhaps if this remark had been fully ex- 
plained to the early members of the New 
York Historical Society — to whom, by the 
way, the volume was first dedicated — the fol- 
lowing paragraph might have been omitted 
from our Colonial History: "It is the misfor- 
tune of this State," the writer says, speaking 
of New York, "that its early founders have 
been held up to the ridicule of the world by 
one of its most gifted sons, who has exhausted 
the resources of his wit and satire in exposing 
imaginary traits in their characters, while the 

120 



most polished efforts of his graver style have 
been reserved to adorn the Corinthian columns 
of the more aristocratic institutions of foreign 
countries. Founders of ancient dynasties have 
sometimes been deified by their successors. 
New York is perhaps the only commonwealth 
whose founders have been covered with ridi- 
cule from the same quarter." Some of the 
old Holland families are also reported to have 
taken the work in high dudgeon as a rash in- 
vasion of the domain of history; and I believe 
one of the gentle sex in Albany, who perhaps 
had no brother or lover to fight a duel, pro- 
posed herself with her own hands to horse- 
whip the offensive writer for his bold attempt, 
forsooth, at spelling and printing for the first 
time some of the old family names. 

From today's standpoint these things seem 
ludicrous and uncalled for in reference to a 
work abounding in kindly humor, everywhere 
accepted as the finest blending of the classic 
and the comic in our literature; and were it 
not that these early enemies soon became his 
warmest friends, I would certainly pass it over 
in silence; but the transition was so sudden 
and sincere that it is one of the pleasantest 
features in his history, and Irving himself 
when preparing his revised edition, refers to 
the matter with evident satisfaction in a pref- 

121 



atory article facetiously styled "The Author's 
Apology." "When I find, after a lapse of 
forty years, this haphazard production of my 
youth still cherished among the descendants 
of the Dutch worthies; when I find its very 
name become a household word, and used to 
give the home-stamp to everything recom- 
mended for popular acceptance, such as 
Knickerbocker societies, Knickerbocker in- 
surance companies, Knickerbocker steam- 
boats, Knickerbocker omnibuses, Knicker- 
bocker's bread, and Knickerbocker ice; and 
when I find New Yorkers of Dutch descent 
priding themselves upon being genuine Knick- 
erbockers — I please myself with the persuasion 
that I have struck the right chord; that my 
dealings with the good old Dutch times, and 
the customs and usages derived from them, are 
in harmony with the feelings and humors of 
my townsmen; that I have opened a vein of 
pleasant associations and quaint character- 
istics peculiar to my native place, and which 
its inhabitants will not willingly suffer to pass 
away; and that, though other histories of New 
York may appear of higher claim to learned 
acceptance, and may take their appropriate 
and dignified rank in the family library, Knick- 
erbocker's history will still be received with 
good-humored intelligence, and be thumbed 

122 



and chuckled over by the family fireside " 
It was indeed wide from the sober aim of 
history, but no volume ever gave such rose- 
tint colors to the early annals of any country, 
and New York, instead of being covered with 
ridicule, is today the only State of this Union 
whose early history is associated with the gold- 
en age of poetry, with "an antiquity extend- 
ing back into the regions of doubt and fable," 
and it is safe to say that the streams of Scot- 
land are no more indebted to the genius of Robert 
Burns and Walter Scott than the Hudson and 
the Catskills to the pen of Washington Irving. 

So much for the introduction, the first re- 
ception, and the success of "Knickerbocker;" 
but I cannot refrain, in passng, from giving a 
few illustrations from this most picturesque 
of histories. Perhaps the sketch of the first 
governor of New Amsterdam is one of the 
happiest in its outline and general filling: 

"The renowned Wouter Van Twiller was 
descended from a long line of Dutch burgo- 
masters, who had comported themselves with 
such singular wisdom and propriety that they 
were never either heard or talked of, which, 
next to being universally applauded, should be 
the ambition of all magistrates. He was a 
man shut up within himself, like an oyster; 
but then it was allowed he seldom said a foolish 

123 



thing. So invincible was his gravity that he 
was never known either to laugh or to smile 
through the whole course of a long and pros- 
perous life. Nay, if a joke were uttered in 
his presence that set light-minded hearers in 
a roar, it was observed to throw him into a 
state of perplexity. He was exactly five feet 
six inches in height, and six feet five inches 
circumference. His face, that infallible index 
of the mind, presented a vast expanse unf urrow- 
ed by any of those lines or angles which dis- 
figure the human countenance with what is 
termed expression, He daily took his four 
stated meals, appropriating exactly an hour 
to each. He smoked and doubted eight 
hours, and slept the remaining twelve of the 
four-and-twenty. Such was the renowned 
Wouter Van Twiller governor of the golden 
age of the province." "Honest days," as 
the historian proceeds, "when every woman 
wore pockets, aye, and that, too, of a goodly 
size, fashioned with patchwork into many 
curious devices and ostentatiously worn on 
the outside. These, in fact, were conven- 
ient receptacles where all good housewives 
carefully stored away such things as they 
wished to have at hand, by which means they 
often came to be incredibly crammed; and 
I remember there was a story current when I 

124 



was a boy that the lady of Wouter Van Twil- 
ler once had occasion to empty her right pock- 
et in search of a wooden ladle, when the con- 
tents filled a couple of corn baskets, and the 
utensil was discovered lying among some rub- 
bish in one corner, but we must not give too 
much faith to all these stories, the anecdotes 
of remote periods being very subject to ex- 
aggeration." 

I pass over the tea parties and parlor gath- 
erings, the dress and manners, his chapters of 
philosophy and those "happy days of prime- 
val simplicity when there were neither public 
commotions nor private quarrels, neither par- 
ties nor sects nor schisms, neither persecu- 
tions nor trials nor punishments; when every 
man attended to what little business he was 
lucky enough to have, or neglected it, if he 
pleased, without asking the opinion of his 
neighbor; when nobody meddled with con- 
cerns above his comprehension, nor neglected 
to correct his own conduct in his zeal to pull to 
pieces the characters of others." I pass over 
the days of William the Testy, who first in- 
troduced the art of fighting by proclamation 
the inroads of the Yankees with their witch- 
craft — their inventions, their schoolmasters, 
and wandering propensities — who "required 
only an inch to gain an ell, or a halter to gain 

125 



a horse; who from the time they first gained 
a foothold on Plymouth Rock began to mi- 
grate, progressing and progressing from place 
to place, making a little here and a little there, 
and controverting the old proverb that a roll- 
ing stone gathers no moss. Hence they have 
facetiously received the nickname of the Pil- 
grims, — that is to say, a people who are al- 
ways seeking a better country than their own." 
We see Antony Van Corlear, the celebrated 
trumpeter, on his diplomatic mission up the 
Hudson — a chapter too dramatic for these 
degenerate days. We see the noble army of 
Peter Stuyvesant passing in review before us, 
and come with sorrow to the brief line in which 
the chivalric hero is gathered to his fathers — 
"Well, den, hardkoppig Peter ben gone at last." 
{ In his first volume we would naturally look 
for his peculiar characteristics as a writer, and 
we find a rich vein of humor and invention; 
but here and there are gentle touches and the 
promise of other qualities! to which Walter 
Scott refers in a letter to Henry Brevoort: 

"I have never read anything so closely re- 
sembling the style of Dean Swift as the 'An- 
nals of Diedrich Knickerbocker.' I have been 
employed these few evenings in reading them 
aloud to Mrs. Scott and two ladies who are 
our guests, and our sides have been absolutely 

126 



sore with laughing. I think, too, there are 
passages which indicate that the author pos- 
sesses powers of a different kind, and has some 
touches which remind me much of Sterne. I 
beg you will have the kindness to let me know 
when Mr. Irving takes pen in hand again; for 
assuredly I shall expect a very great treat, 
which I may chance never to hear of but 
through your kindness." 

The prophecy of Scott waited ten years for 
its fulfilment, but it came at last in the most 
charming collection of essays in our language — 
the "Sketch Book" — which I divide into es- 
says of character and sentiment, English pic- 
tures and American legends. As representa- 
tives of the first I take "The Broken Heart," 
"The Wife," "The Widow and Her Son." 

"The Broken Heart," perhaps the greatest 
favorite of his character sketches and the best 
transcript of his own early experience, seems 
to me a gem in our literature. In the short 
space of six pages he portrays the finer quali- 
ties of woman's nature, and illustrates it with 
the touching story of Curran's daughter, whose 
heart was buried in the coffin of Robert Emmet. 
This essay was suggested by a friend who had 
seen the heroine at a masquerade and heard 
the plaintive song which melted every one to 
tears : 

127 



"She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps. 

She sings the wild songs of her dear native plains, 

Every note which he loved awaking. 
Ah! little they think who delight in her strains 

How the heart of the minstrel is breaking." 

In the whole range of English literature I 
know of no pen except Irving's which could 
have written an essay like this in plain and 
simple prose. We find the same tender senti- 
ment in "Highland Mary" and "Annabel Lee;" 
but poetry is the natural language of passion 
and sorrow. Irving had often been likened to 
Addison, but in this particular they have noth- 
ing in common. Edward Everett has well 
said: "One chord in the human heart, the 
pathetic, for whose sweet music Addison had 
no ear, Irving touched with the hand of a mas- 
ter. He learned that skill in the school of 
early disappointment." And in the following 
passage we seem to hear its sad but sweet vibra- 
tion still responding through ten years of sor- 
row to the memory of her whose hopes were 
entwined with his: "There are some strokes of 
calamity which scathe and scorch the soul, 
which penetrate to the vital seat of happiness 
and blast it, never again to put forth bud and 
blossom; and let those tell her agony who have 
had the portals of the tomb suddenly closed 

128 



between them and the being they most loved 
on earth; who have sat at its threshold as one 
shut out in a cold and lonely world whence all 
that was most lovely and loving had departed." 

It is said when Lord Byron was dying at Mis- 
silonghi that he requested his attendant to read 
to him "The Broken Heart." While he was 
reading one of the most touching portions the 
poet's eyes moistened and he said, "Irving nev- 
er wrote that story without weeping, nor can I 
hear it without tears;" and he added, "I have 
not wept much in this world, for trouble never 
brings tears to my eyes, but I always have 
tears for 'The Broken Heart.' ' 

Soon after its publication in England, Irving 
met Mrs. Siddons. After his introduction the 
queen of tragedy looked at him for a moment 
and then, in her clear, deep-toned voice, she 
slowly enunciated, "You have made me weep." 
As Pierre Irving remarks in his "Life and Let- 
ters," "Nothing could have been finer than such 
a compliment from such a source, but the ' ac- 
cost' was so abrupt and the manner so peculiar 
that our modest writer was completely discon- 
certed." Some time afterward, after the ap- 
pearance of his "Bracebridge Hall," they again 
met, and singularly enough she addressed him 
in the self-same fashion — "You've made me 
weep again." "Ah!" replied Irving, "but you 

129 



taught me first to weep," as he called up his 
first visit to London, fifteen years before the 
"Sketch-Book" was written and the then won- 
derful power of this actress without a rival. 

Kindred to this essay which we have just con- 
sidered, and well suited as a companion-sketch, 
I select "The Wife," a true picture of woman's 
power in adversity. As the story goes, his 
friend Leslie had married a beautiful and ac- 
complished girl, and, having an ample fortune 
it was his ambition that her life should be a 
fairy-tale; but one day, having embarked in 
speculation, his riches took to themselves wings 
and he found himself reduced almost to penury. 
For a time he keeps his situation to himself, 
but every look reveals his sorrow. When at 
last he tells his story and we see her rising from 
a state of childish dependence, becoming the 
support and comfort of her husband in his mis- 
fortune, and follow them from a mansion to a 
cottage, we feel that the last state of that man is 
better than the first. In the knowledge and 
possession of such a heart he had truer riches 
than diamonds can symbolize, and to the credit 
of our better nature the words of Irving are 
true: "There is in every true woman's heart a 
spark of heavenly fire which lies dormant in the 
broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles 
up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of 

130 






adversity. No man knows what the wife of his 
bosom is; no man knows what a ministering 
angel she is, until he has gone with her through 
the fiery trials of this world." What a beauti- 
ful simile is this: "As the vine which has long 
twined its graceful foliage about the oak, and 
been lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the 
hardy plant is rifted by the thunderbolt, cling 
round it with its caressing tendrils and bind up 
its shattered boughs, so is it beautifully ordered 
by Providence that woman, who is the mere de- 
pendent and ornament of man in his happier 
hours, should be his stay and solace when smit- 
ten by sudden calamity, winding herself into 
the rugged recesses of his nature, tenderly sup- 
porting the drooping head and binding up the 
broken heart." 

Outside of the drama of Shakespeare and the 
pages of Walter Scott, I know of no pictures of 
graceful womanhood so complete as those found 
in Irving's Sketch Book. It is said that the 
original of which this character is a copy, was 
the wife of the poet Morris; and perhaps the 
following incident gave rise to the suggestion 
which shows how little truth popular rumor 
needs for a sustaining diet. While minister at 
Spain he received a letter from his brother say- 
ing that General Morris requested permission 
to publish his story of "The Wife" in a periodi- 

131 



cal of which he was proprietor, and Irving 
facetiously responded, "Give my regards to 
General Morris, and tell him he is quite wel- 
come to my wife, — which is more than most of 
his friends could say." (Perhaps Rip Van 
Winkle would have been willing to have 
thrown in his.) 

The other sketch to which we call attention 
in our division of character and sentiment — 
"The Widow and her Son" — is one of the most 
pathetic in the " Sketch Book," and follows 
naturally the two we have just considered. 
It seems to round out and complete Irving's 
idea of womanhood as seen in a maiden's life, 
a wife's devotion, and a mother's love. What 
depths of feeling in passages like this: "Oh! 
there is an enduring tenderness in the love of a 
mother to her son that transcends all other af- 
fections of the heart. It is neither to be chilled 
by selfishness, nor daunted by danger, nor 
weakened by worthlessness, nor stifled by in- 
gratitude. She will sacrifice every comfort to 
his convenience ; she will surrender every pleas- 
ure to his enjoyment ; she will glory in his fame 
and exult in his prosperity; and, if misfortune 
overtake him, he will be the dearer to her from 
misfortune; and, if disgrace settle upon his 
name, she will still love and cherish him in 
spite of his disgrace; and, if all the world 

132 



beside cast him off, she will be all the world 
to him." 

There are few passages in prose or poetry 
more touching than the description of the 
mother's effort to put on something like mourn- 
ing for her only son — a black ribbon or so, a 
faded black handkerchief — showing the strug- 
gle between pious affection and utter poverty. 

All through these essays we seem to see a 
gentle spirit clouded by some great sorrow, yet 
cheerful in spite of misfortune. What a change 
has come over him since "Knickerbocker"! 
Lord Bacon says, "It is more pleasing to have a 
lively work upon a sad and solemn ground than 
to have a dark and melancholy work upon a 
lightsome ground." This may be true in pic- 
tures, but not in character; for the principal 
element in that happy compound — a genuine 
man or woman — is cheerfulness, and disposi- 
tion naturally gloomy and foreboding is rarely 
ever so thoroughly irradiated, even by the 
light of heaven, that we are not chilled by con- 
tact. Misanthropy never improves by years: 
it is a heart-thermometer ever below freezing- 
point even in the sunlight of prosperity. But 
there are natures so bright and lightsome that 
no clouds of misfortune can hide their cheering 
radiance; mellowed by sorrow, and tempered 
by adversity, they shine forth in gentle gleams, 

133 



full of genial and tender expression; and I 
think this distinction is one your own reading 
will justify: that we find in these essays a 
bright spirit sobered by sorrow, but look in 
vain for a line of misanthropy. 

There is another element in Irving's composi- 
tion no less marked than his humor and pathos 
— a reverence for antiquity which forms a 
marked feature in the essays that we designate 
as English pictures. In his "Rural Life" and 
"Christmas Sketches" we see his love for the 
old English writers, and recognize the fact 
that Chaucer and Spenser were among his 
favorite authors. These early poets were to 
him something more than "wells of English 
undefiledo" They are rather like the lakes 
of the Adirondacks, separated from each other 
and from us by events which loom up like 
mountains in the world's history, clear and 
cool in far-off solitudes, reflecting in their 
bright mirrors the serenity of earth and the 
broad expanse of heaven, responding to the 
gentle glow of summer sunsets, holding quiet 
communion with the evening stars, and awak- 
ing to rosy life at the first touch of morning. 

The old English ballads have all the sparkles 
the energy, and rhythm of our mountain 
streams, but Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, 
and Bunyon are the fountains from which flows 

134 



the river — ay, the Hudson — of our language. 
Irving's mind was early turned to these 
sources of our literature, and we find the result 
of this study a pure and classic style. What a 
beautiful acknowledgment is this: "The pas- 
toral writers of other countries appear as if 
they had paid nature an occasional visit and 
become acquainted with her general charms, 
but the British poets have lived and revelled 
with her; they have wooed her in her most 
secret haunts; they have watched her minut- 
est caprices; a spray could not tremble in the 
breeze, a leaf could not rustle to the ground, a 
diamond drop could not patter in the stream, a 
fragance could not exhale from the humble vio- 
let, nor a daisy unfold its crimson tints to the 
morning, but it has been noticed by these im- 
passioned and delicate observers and wrought 
up into some beautiful morality." 

With this deep love for the old masters of 
English literature, we are not surprised that 
Westminster Abbey, with its Poet's Corner, 
should be the subject of one of his earliest es- 
says; and the principal feature of this essay, 
and that which makes it the enduring one of 
all that have been written on this venerable 
pile, is the native quality of reverence and sin- 
cerity. And it is indeed pleasant in days, 
when flippant writing is often received for wit 

135 



and misspelled slang accepted for originality 
to turn to these essays in which we see the nobil- 
ity of a royal heart, and feel that "Truth and 
Good and Beauty — the offspring of God — are 
not subject to the changes which beset the in- 
vention of men." I make no quotation from 
this familiar essay. It possesses too much 
unity to detach a paragraph or a sentence. I 
can only say I read it over and over with the 
name interest today as years ago in the deep 
shadow of that melancholy aisle at the tomb of 
the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots. 

There is one other place in England where I 
rook my pocket edition of the "Sketch Book," 
— to Stratf ord-on-Avon ; for, more than any 
other man, Irving is associated with the home 
and burial-place of the world's greatest poet. 
Writers without number, and many well known 
to fame, have given their impressions of Strat- 
ford, but Irving's description supersedes them 
all. It seems as if the quiet and pensive char- 
acter of the man fits into the rural scenery of 
England — ay! as if the hills and woodlands of 
Warwickshire, recognizing a kindred spirit to 
their gentle Shakespeare, after the laspe of 
three centuries, had associated in enduring 
framework and sweet companionship the liv- 
ing presence of our gentlest writer. What a 
wonderful blending of the old and the new! 

136 



Two hundred and fifty years of progress, of 
struggle and invention! A new nation rising 
into being, with its material trinity — the 
steam-engine, the printing-press, and the tele- 
graph. The single newspaper of Queen Eliza- 
beth unfolding in every town and city its 
crowded columns of daily and hourly records 
from every quarter of the globe. Ariel and 
Puck, at last thoroughly materialized, and 
dressed in comely muslin, whisper to each 
other across a continent, and beyond the Ber- 
mudas, to the far-off islands of the sea. It 
seems, indeed, a new world, separated from the 
old by greater spaces than waste of waters or 
the lapse of years; but in this companionship 
of Shakespeare and Irving we see the enduring 
qualities of the human heart. In the deep 
sympathy of Irving's nature for the olden time 
we feel that he has added another charm to 
Stratford — that we, as a nation, have a better 
claim to the great poet. We muse at his grave. 
We wander along the gently-flowing Avon, we 
rest beneath the great oaks of Sir Thomas Lucy, 
We pick flowers in the garden of Ann Hatha- 
way's cottage; it seems as if Irving in some 
way belongs here too, and we are not at all 
certain if the Bacon theory is established 
but that Irving will come in for his share of the 
dramas, as author of the "Midsummer Night's 

137 



Dream" or the "Merry Wives of Windsor." 
To pass from the very centre of "Merrie 
England," with its hallowed associations and 
rich inheritance of centuries, to the mountains 
and valleys of our own country, would be a 
sudden transition if the space were not bridged 
over and the distance dissipated in one of the 
closing paragraphs of this essay: "I had been 
walking all day in a complete delusion. I had 
surveyed the landscape through the prism of 
poetry, which had tinged every object with 
the hues of the rainbow. I had been sur- 
rounded with fancied beings, with mere airy 
nothings conjured up by poetic power, yet 
which to me had all the charm of reality; and 
I could but reflect on the singular gift of the 
poet, to be able thus to spread the magic of his 
mind over the very face of nature, to give to 
things and places a charm and character not 
their own, and to turn this working day world 
into a perfect fairy-land." 

In this passage we find the best description 
of Irving's own creative faculty. This wizard 
influence which the traveller experiences at 
Stratford is equally felt along the banks of the 
Hudson. The whole landscape, from the 
Palisades to the Catskills, is seen today through 
the prism of poetry — the magic of his mind 
spread over the loveliest vale of the fairest 

138 



stream that flows, and this working-day world 
converted into a perfect fairy-land. 

It is said that "walls must get the weather- 
stain before they grow the ivy;" that legends 
like ghosts flourish best in an uncertain twi- 
light, or 

"Where auld ruined castles gray 
Nod to the moon." 

We expect to find legends flourishing in the 
gloaming mountains of old Scotland. We have 
easy faith for the Knights of the Round Table, 
the Tales of Robin Hood and the brave outlaws 
of Sherwood Forest. We see the frozen my- 
thology of Scandinavia every day melting into 
poetry, like the fabled words of Plato or the 
thawed-out music of Baron Munchausen's 
flute. We read the story of Undine and Hilde- 
brand, the "Arabian Nights," the prowess of 
the Cid, and the warm troubadour chivalry of 
southern Europe; but what have we to do with 
legends and poetry in the broad sunlight of the 
nineteenth century? These have no place when 
facts and history pre-empt the soil. 

Yes! but this adds to the wonder and charm 
of Irving's creative power! the romance of 
Europe was to be had for the gleaning. In 
America it had to be created; and the wonder 
is that this which sprang up in a night is more 
real than the legends which have grown and 

139 



blossomed for a thousand years. He touched the 
mountains and the valleys with the wand of his 
fancy, and they were peopled with beings more 
substantial than fairies, more real than history. 
In his "Rip Van Winkle" and "Legend of 
Sleepy Hollow," which I take as illustrations 
of his American legends, we at once see that he 
is one of the few writers who appreciate the 
fact that comedy is quite as natural as tragedy. 
At every step in the story we see the impossible; 
but after all we feel that it is none the less real. 
Bryant's poem, "The Kaaterskill Falls," is at 
once full of unity, possibility, and beauty; but 
it is a dream compared with the "Legend of 
Rip Van Winkle." At the time it was written 
we understand that Irving had never visited 
the Catskill Mountains; in the legend itself 
we see traces of a German superstition; but 
there is this feature in all his stories: wherever 
he located them they seem at once to take root 
and flourish. This story is too well known, 
to need delineation. The old Dutch village, 
with its philosophers and sages; the shiftless 
but good-natured Van Winkle; the strange ad- 
venture on the mountain; the return — it all 
passes before our mind like a series of pictures: 
and we come to the closing scene, which the 
play-writer would have done well to follow; 
for there is more dramatic unity in the story 

140 



than in the drama. "Does nobody here know 
Rip Van Winkle?" "Oh! Rip Van Winkle," 
exclaimed two or three. "Oh! to be sure; 
there's Rip Van Winkle yonder, leaning against 
a tree." Rip looked, and beheld a precise 
counterpart of himself as he went up the moun- 
tain, apparently as lazy and certainly as ragged. 
The poor fellow was now completely confound- 
ed. He doubted his own identity, and whether 
he was himself— or another man. In the 
midst of his bewilderment it was again de- 
manded what was his name. "God knows!" 
exclaimed he, at his wits' end. "I'm not 
myself. I'm some one else. That's me yon- 
der — no, that's somebody else got into my 
shoes. I was myself last night, but I fell 
asleep on the mountains, and they've changed 
my gun, and everything's changed, and I'm 
changed, and I cannot tell what's my name or 
who I am." At this critical moment a fresh 
comely woman pressed through the throng to 
get a peep at the gray-bearded man. She had 
a chubby child in her arms which, frightened at 
his looks, began to cry. "Hush, Rip," cried 
she, "the old man won't hurt you." The 
name of the child, the air of the mother, the 
tone of the voice, all awakened a train of 
recollections in his mind. " What is your name 
my good woman?" asked he. "Judith Gar- 

141 



denier." "And your father's name?" "Oh, 
poor man! Rip Van Winkle was his name. 
It's twenty years since he went away from 
home with his gun, and has never been heard 
of since. His dog came home without him; 
but whether he shot himself or was carried 
away by the Indians nobody can tell. I was 
then but a little girl." Rip had but one ques- 
tion more to ask, but he put it with a faltering 
voice. "Where's your mother?" "Oh! she, 
too, died but a short time since. She broke a 
blood-vessel in a fit of passion at a New Eng- 
land pedler." There was a drop of comfort, at 
least, in this intelligence. The honest man 
could control himself no longer. He caught 
his daughter and child in his arms. "I am 
your father!" cried he. "Young Rip Van 
Winkle once, old Rip Van Winkle now. Does 
nobody here know poor Rip Van Winkle?" 

This touch of humor, even in the most in- 
tense part of the drama, is entirely consistent 
and does not disturb in the least its charming 
reality. The same element is still more marked 
in the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow." and per- 
haps even in greater degree illustrates the reality 
of Irving's legends — their power of taking root 
and flourishing even in the midst of history. 

On the old post-road, half way between 
Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow, a monument 

142 



marks the spot where Major Andre was cap- 
tured, erected in 1853 by the county of West- 
chester to the memory of the brave men who 
could not be tempted by British gold. But 
this marble shaft with its beautifi.1 inscription 
lack the magnetic influence and the heartfelt 
interest of the plain headstone in the burial- 
yard of Sleepy Hollow; for in the universal 
heart of mankind the poet's corner is dearer 
than the hero's tomb, although, as here, the 
hero springs from the common people, and 
his monument commemorates the highest and 
the rarest courage — the heroism of honesty! 

Nay, more; the United States Government, 
in remembrance of Paulding's courage, gave 
him a large tract of land in Ohio, and from this 
revenue one of his sons built one of the finest 
villas on the Hudson; but the traveller today 
along our river, even the most loyal American, 
who spells his country's name with a good- 
sized capital letter and rightly considers it the 
first in the alphabet of nations, turns with a 
deeper reverence and a truer love to a little 
cottage near at hand, with its quaint turrets 
and gables looking out on the tranquil waters 
of Tappan Zee, the quiet home of Diedrich 
Knickerbocker — the Dutch Herodotus — the 
writer of the gentle heart. 

Everything that Irving has written about 

143 



Tarry town seems to partake of the drowsy, 
dreamy influence that pervades the very at- 
mosphere. The "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" 
seems as native to the soil as the bright, honest- 
faced flowers of their snug-sheltered gardens. 
As Darwin or Huxley would say, I Irving's 
stories fit themselves to the environments. 
They belong to the age and the time which 
they represent.! What a natural picture, one 
we all have seen, is this of old Baltus Van 
Tassel dozing his life away in solid comfort, his 
bustling dame completely occupied with her 
housekeeping and her poultry, letting her rosy- 
cheeked daughter Katrina do just as she pleas- 
ed, adding a sage and sensible observation fully 
appreciated by each generation and which may 
some day be endorsed by colleges and institu- 
tions of learning, that "ducks and geese are 
foolish things and must be looked after, but 
girls can take care of themselves." We are in- 
troduced to Ichabod Crane, the Yankee school- 
master of the neighborhood, and Brom Bones, 
his dangerous rival for the hand and fortune of 
Katrina. They meet at a quilting-party at 
the house of Mynheer Van Tassel, where we are 
entertained with ghostly stories of the olden 
time, including a marvelous adventure of 
Brom Bones with the well-known goblin-rider, 
the Headless Hessian of Sleepy Hollow. 

144 



Ichabod lingers after the company disperses, 
— the custom, I believe, of old-time lovers; 
but something must have gone wrong in the 
interview, for "he sallies forth with an air quite 
desolate and chopfallen, and now at the very 
witching time of night he mounts his steed for 
his homeward journey. Unluckily, his route 
was the very road over which the headless 
horseman was wont to ride. The night grew 
darker and darker. The stars seemed to sink 
deeper in the sky. He had nevzr felt so lonely 
and miserable. He passed the fearful tree 
where Major Andre was captured, but in the 
dark shadow of the grove, on the margin of the 
brook, he beheld something huge, misshapen, 
black, and towering. The hair of the affright- 
ed pedagogue rose upon his head with terror. 
To turn and fly was now too late, for with a 
scramble and a bound the shadowy object put 
itself into motion and stood at once in the mid- 
dle of the road. Ichabod bethought himself of 
the galloping Hessian, and quickened his steed 
with the hopes of leaving him behind. The 
stranger, however, quickened his horse to an 
equal pace. Ichabod pulled up and fell into a 
walk. The strange horseman did the same. 
His heart began to sink within him. He en- 
deavored to sing a psalm-tune, but his parched 
tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. There 

145 



was something in the silence of his strange com- 
panion at once mysterious and appalling. It 
was soon fearfully accounted for. On mount- 
ing a rising ground, which brought the figure 
of his fellow-traveller in relief against the sky, 
gigantic in height and muffled in a cloak, Icha- 
bod was horror-struck on perceiving that he 
was headless, but his horror was still more in- 
creased on observing that the head, which 
should have rested on his shoulders, was car- 
ried before him on the pommel of the saddle." 
His terror rose to desperation, and, like Caius 
Cassius in Macaulay's poem of the "Battle of 
Lake Regillus," he rode "for death and life;" 
but the spectre started full jump with him. 
"Away, then, they dashed through thick and 
thin, stones flying and sparks flashing at every 
bound. Ichabod's flimsy garments fluttered in 
the air as he stretched his long, lank body away 
over his horse's head in the eagerness of his 
flight. 'If I can but reach the bridge,' thought 
Ichabod, 'I'm safe.' Just then he heard the 
black steed panting and blowing close behind 
him. He even fancied that he felt his hot 
breath. Another convulsive kick, and his 
steed sprang upon the bridge. He thundered 
over the resounding planks. He gained the 
opposite side. Then he saw the goblin rising 
in his stirrups, and in the very act of launching 

146 



his head at him. He endeavored to dodge the 
horrible missile, but too late. It encountered 
his cranium with a tremendous crash. He was 
tumbled headlong into the dust, and the black 
steed and the goblin-rider passed by like a 
whirlwind. The next day a saddle was found 
trampled in the dirt ; the tracks of horses deep- 
ly dented in the road, evidently at furious 
speed, were traced to the bridge, beyond which, 
on the bank of a broad part of the brook, where 
the water ran deep and black, was found the 
hat of the unfortunate Ichabod, and close be- 
side it a shattered pumpkin." 

Throughout the entire race we are reminded 
of the midnight ride of Tarn o'Shanter when 
pursued by witches, and his strange adventure 
at the Bridge of Doon. In fact, the old Dutch 
church is not a bad representation of old Allo- 
way Kirk, and there is still greater resemblance 
in the fact that the reality of the poem and the 
reality of the story are not in the least affected 
by the humorous catastrophe. 

The legends of "Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip 
Van Winkle" were introduced in the "Sketch 
Book" as having been found among the papers 
of the late Diedrich Knickerbocker. In touch- 
es of humor and gentleness of spirit they are 
entirely consistent with the old gentleman's 
character. The wit and humor are always 

147 



kindly, and these qualities find happy illustra- 
tion in the fact that Mr. Jesse Merwin, the 
original of Ichabod Crane, whom Irving met 
at the house of Judge Van Ness, was always 
proud of the delineation, and returned the com- 
pliment in the sincerest way. Think of it! 
Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Ichabod 
Crane survives the pumpkin catastrophe, woos 
and weds some other Katrina, and names a son 
after Washington Irving. After Irving's death 
a letter was found among his papers — written 
by our Yankee schoolmaster, endorsed in Irv- 
ing's own handwriting — "From Jesse Merwin 
the original of Ichabod Crane." 

I have dwelt at length on the " Sketch Book," 
for in these essays the writer seems to have un- 
packed every quality of his style. We find 
Bracebridge Hall outlined in his "Christmas 
Sketches," the spirit of the Alhambra in "West- 
minster Abbey," and Knickerbocker in his 
"American Legends." 

It is, moreover, one of the few books that 
never grow old. It belongs to the people, and 
is one of the best known of American books. 
A fine critic and scholar, George Sumner, said 
that the "Sketch Book" was more widely read 
in its original tongue than any in our language 
except the "Vicar of Wakefield," and Long- 
fellow, in an address before the Massachusetts 

148 



Historical Society, pays it a beautiful tribute 
in the following poetic paragraph: 

"Every reader has his first book, one among 
all others which first fascinates his imagination 
and excites and satisfies the desires of his mind 
To me this was the ' Sketch Book' of Washing- 
ton Irving. How many delightful works he 
has given us, written before and since! volumes 
of history and fiction which illustrate his native 
land, and some of which illuminate it and make 
the Hudson as romantic as the Rhine. Yet 
still the charm of the 'Sketch-Book' remains 
unbroken, the old fascination still lingers about 
tt, and whenever I open its pages, I open also 
ihat mysterious door which leads back into the 
haunted chambers of youth." 

"Bracebridge Hall," his next volume, written 
at the suggestion of Thomas Moore, gives us a 
fine picture of old-fashioned English life. The 
book begins where most stories end — with a 
wedding gathering; but when we are fairly 
introduced to the Hall and its hospitable pro- 
prietor, we are in no hurry for the wedding to 
take place. In the society of Lady Lilly-craft 
the old General, the tender-hearted Phoebe 
Wilkins, old Simon and Christy, we are con- 
tent to float on together for months, if need be, 
through a social dream of five hundred pages. 
I know of no gathering where the reader more 

149 



thoroughly feels that he is an invited guest. 
The story has none of the characteristics of a 
novel. It possesses neither plot nor dramatic 
quality. The essays are strung together like 
beads on a slender thread, and the value is in 
the beads and not the string. We may forget 
the fair Julia and her brave Captain, but the 
sketch of the "Stout Gentleman" and "St. 
Mark's Eve" once read are never forgotten. 
We may forget the day after we read it whether 
the wedding took place in the morning or in the 
afternoon, whether the bride had eyes blue or 
hazel, or like most of lovers, had none at all; 
but the character of the old Squire, with his 
dogs, his whims and kindly heart, who "taught 
his boys to ride, and shoot, and speak the 
truth," taken an enduring hold on the memory, 
when we close the volume we feel that Lowell in 
his "Fable for the Critics" has given us in 
a dozen lines a genuine crayon sketch: 

"But allow me to speak what I honestly feel; 

To a true poet-heart add the fun of Dick Steele; 

Throw in all of Addison minus the chill, 

With the whole of that partnership, stock, and good-will 

Mix well, and while stirring hum o'er as a spell 

The fine old English gentleman: simmer it well. 

Sweeten just to your own private liking; then strain, 

That only the finest and clearest remain. 

Let it stand out of doors till a soul it receives 



150 



From the warm lazy sun loitering down through green 

leaves — 
And you'll have a choice nature not wholly deserving, 
A name either English or Yankee — just Irving." 

Next to "Bracebridge Hall," in order of pub- 
lication, we have the "Tales of a Traveller," to 
my mind the most unanchored of Irving's writ- 
ings, and therefore lacking for the most part the 
great charm and unity of his other essays, viz., 
local associations and attachments. 

But, if any of his friends, on either side of the 
Atlantic, were disposed to be critical, their cen- 
sure was of short duration; for his next work 
the "Life and Voyages of Columbus," was a 
new departure in the right direction. This 
event — the greatest in the annals of mankind, 
the most daring and romantic in the doman of 
truth, the sublime energy and perseverance of a 
man struggling with fate — was a happy subject 
for his pen, and it was so carefully written, so 
graceful in style, and so accurate in research, 
that Lord Jeffrey remarks in the Edinburgh Re- 
view: "It will supersede every other work on 
the subject and never itself be superseded." 

Compliments were now literally showered 
upon him on every hand. The Royal Society 
of Literature voted the new historian one of 
their fifty-guinea gold medals, and, with just 
pride, Irving writes to this brother, "What 

151 



makes this the more gratifying is that the other 
medal is voted to Hallam, author of tjhe ' Mid- 
dle Ages.' " 

There is an incident connected with this 
medal worthy of notice. Some years after 
his return to America, it was stolen from his 
brother's safe during a fire, but returned the 
same night by the thief, who slyly opened the 
door of his brother's residence and threw it into 
the hall. This medal melted down into a mass 
of shapeless gold, the work of an hour, would 
have been worth two hundred and fifty dollars. 
Even the robber had respect for the guinea- 
stamp when it bore the inscription of Washing- 
ton Irving. 

^"The Chronicles of Granada," his next vol- 
ume, not only opens up, as the writer says, a 
tract of history which had been overrun with 
the weeds of fable, but also forms a natural in- 
troduction or threshold over which we pass 
from the "History of Columbus" to the "Tales 
of the Alhambra," aptly styled by Prescott 
"the beautiful Spanish Sketch Book." 

His "Crayon Miscellany," published on his 
return from Europe, contains the "Tour on the 
Prairies" and the well-known essays, "Abbotts- 
ford" and "Newstead Abbey." Then follow 
the Spanish Legends, "Astoria" and the "Ad- 
ventures of Captain Bonneville." The "Life 

152 



of Goldsmith" comes next in order — a labor 
of sympathy and love. The " Life of Mahomet" 
shows his passion for Oriental history. " Wol- 
fe rt Roost," published at the age of seventy- 
two, is full of the old-time humor of "Sleepy 
Hollow," and brings us to the crowning labor — 
the fitting capital of the column — his "Life of 
Washington. "J 

Wonderful as these volumes are, which even 
in this brief review seem to rise up before us 
like a new vision of the "Arabian Nights," in 
our literature they are only part and parcel of 
the poetry of his own experience. His pic- 
turesque and varied essays are the natural pro- 
duct of a varied and wandering life, and to feel 
the full beauty of his works we must read them 
in the light of his early and later history. 

When seventeen years of age he made his 
first voyage up the Hudson, "in the good old 
times," as he expresses it, "before steamboats 
and railroads had driven all poetry and ro- 
mance out of travel." Three years later we see 
him in the northern wilderness of New York en 
route for Ogdensburg and Montreal — a tedious 
journey in those days of corduroy roads and 
unbridged rivers. After his return, we find 
him at Ballston and Saratoga Springs, given 
up by his friends to die of consumption. The 
following year we see him in southern Europe, 

153 






in quest of health at Marseilles, Genoa, and 
Sicily; at Rome, in company with Washington 
Allston, half persuaded by the enthusiasm of 
genius to try his own hand as an artist; at 
Paris, spending six months with profit and 
pleasure, judging from his brief journal and 
correspondence; then, through Belgium and 
Holland, to London, the great city of modern 
civilization — yes, for centuries the university 
of the poet and writer, compared with which 
New York, with its strange mixture of eighty 
thousand inhabitants, must have seemed a par- 
ish school. 

After two years' absence he returns with 
health restored, resumes his studies, and in his 
twenty-fourth year is admitted attorney-at-law. 
But the following year we find him pursuing 
the main business of his life — viz., literature 
and travel. The first number of Salmagundi 
appears early in January. In March, his let- 
ters bear date Philadelphia; in May, Freder- 
icksburgh; in June, Richmond, drawn thither 
by the magnetism and trial of Aaron Burr. 
The following season he makes two trips to 
Montreal, and spends a number of weeks at the 
residence of Judge Van Ness, now known as 
Lindenwald, home of the late Martin Van 
Buren. We next see him at Baltimore and 
Washington — cities far removed from New 

154 



York in those primitive times when our travel- 
ler "spent three days on the road and one night 
in a log-house." In 1813 we find him editor 
of the Analectic Magazine in Philadelphia. In 
1814, during our second war with Great Britain 
we see him secretary of Governor Tompkins, 
with the rank of colonel, bearing despatches 
through the western wilderness to Sackett's 
Harbor on Lake Ontario. At the close of the 
war we see him in his brother's counting-house 
in Liverpool. The following season he makes 
a pilgrimage through the Welsh Mountains, 
the central parj; of England, and the Highlands 
of Scotland. The next season we find him 
harassed with business, until the failure and 
bankruptcy of the firm swept away his broth- 
er's fortune and his own; and at the age of 
thirty-five Irving went up to London to com- 
mence life anew. 

It seems as if the success of every man is in 
part the transcript of the same story that Gen- 
ius has less need of opportunity than adversity. 

"That he that creeps from cradle on to grave, 
Unskilled save in the velvet course of fortune, 
Hath missed the discipline of noble hearts." 

In this fifteen years of wandering by land 
and sea, this general study of human nature in 
every phase of life, we find a good capital and 
rich experience for the coming essayist. Add 

155 



this to a fine classical education and a still finer 
course of reading from the English authors of 
the Elizabethan and Augustan periods, under 
the guidance of his brothers, all of whom had a 
taste for literature, and we have one side of the 
equation of Washington Irving's life. The 
question now is, What is he equal to, what can 
he do? The study and discipline of every 
young man find expression in the plain alge- 
braic symbols x x y — unknown quantities in the 
un worked problem of life. Mere education 
may be furnished by teacher, parent, or guar- 
dian, or it may be acquired by the patience and 
perseverance of a youth like Elihu Burritt, who 
learns eighty languages at the forge, but the re- 
sult rests alone in the will and manhood of the 
individual; and it was this which supported 
Irving when he wandered almost penniless 
through the streets of London, and in the dark- 
est hour of adversity, when urged by his broth- 
ers and his old friend, Commodore Decatur, to 
come home and accept the first clerkship of the 
navy at a salary of $2400 a year, led him to re- 
ply, "I am determined not to return until I 
have sent some writings before me that shall 
make me return to the smiles rather than skulk 
back to the pity of my friends." 

It was this faith in himself which published 
the first volume of the "Sketch Book" at his 

156 



own expense when declined by the London 
publishers, — the reception of which in Britain, 
France, and Germany sileatly answered the 
standing sneer of the English critic, " Who reads 
an American book?" 

The following season, happy in his success, 
we find him in Paris writing" Bracebridge Hall," 
and launching his brother Peter in a steam- 
boat enterprise with a rashness worthy of Colo- 
nel Sellers in the "Gilded Age" of Mark Twain. 
CWe next see him at Leyden, Amsterdam, 
Frankfort, and Heidelburg, visiting the castles 
and ruins along the Rhine; then to Strasburg 
and through the Black Forest to the upper 
waters of the Danube. On his way to Munich 
and Vienna, he visits the battlefield of Blen- 
heim; then through Moravia and Bohemia to 
Dresden, where he remains six months tossed 
about, as he expresses it, on the stream of so- 
ciety} then through the Hartz Mountains, to 
Paris, where he remains one year and writes 
the " Tales of a Traveller." On his return from 
London he makes an excursion through Orleans 
and the centre of Francelfo Madrid, where, in 
the midst of books and manuscripts, he works 
fourteen hours a day for ten months on the 
"History of Columbus, j 

We next see him on his way through La 
Mancha and the desolate mountains of the 

157 



Morenas, well known today through the illus- 
trations of Dore, and rounds out the year in 
Spain with an Oriental dream of ten weeks in 
the palace of the Alhambra. Diedrich Knick- 
erbocker in the romantic land of Cervantes, 
with a sovereignty as absolute as Sancho Pan- 
za's firmly established on the throne of Boab- 
dil! 

But an appointment from President Jackson 
breaks the enchantment, and he repairs to 
London as Secretary of the American Legation. 
We see him at Oxford University receiving a de- 
gree of LL.D., almost overwhelmed by the ac- 
clamations of the students and cries of Ichabod 
Crane, Rip Van Winkle, Diedrich Knicker- 
bocker, and Geoffrey Crayon. We find him at 
Newstead Abbey, occupying Lord Byron's 
room by way of inspiration, breathing in as it 
were the very oxygen of poetry among the sur- 
viving oaks of Sherwood Forest. We see him 
travelling with Martin Van Buren, on a Christ- 
mas holiday, through England; and after 
seventeen years of absence he returns to his 
native country, the acknowledged pioneer of 
American literature, and, like him whose name 
he honored, "first in the hearts of his country- 
men." 

At the solicitation of his friends, he receives 
a public banquet in his native city, presided 

158 



over by Chancellor Kent, pronounced by 
Charles King, President of Columbia College, 
— the most successful dinner ever given in the 
United States. 

During the summer he visits the Catskill 
Mountains, and the White Mountains, a sec- 
tion abounding with stories that never reach 
the dignity of a legend. We see him on his 
"Tour of the Prairies" through Ohio to the 
banks of the Mississippi and the Missouri. 
(In 1855 he purchases ten acres of land two 
miles south of Tarry town, and the Wolfert 
Roost of old Jacob Van Tassel is transformed 
into the Sunnyside of Washington Irving. It 
seems strange that the old family device, 
"Flourishing in sun and shade," should be hap- 
pily abbreviated here in Sunnyside, and the 
three holly leaves given as a coat of arms to his 
warlike ancestor, William de Irwin, by Robert 
Bruce on the field of Bannockburn, should, 
after the lapse of five hundred years, find poetic 
association in the ivy that twines about the 
porch of his cottage, brought from the home of 
the minstrel, who has woven the stern history 
of Scotland with the flowers of poesy — from Ab- 
bottsford, the land of his fathers, transplanted 
by Mrs. Renwick, the "Blued-eyed Lassie" of 
Robert Burns; and stranger still that this wan- 
derer of the family should associate this device 

159 



with a real family shield or shelter, the only 
device of our broad land — the American home 
— and gather under his own roof his brother 
and sister. 

Busy and happy in the development of his 
plans, he declines the office of mayor of the 
city of New York, and also the post of Secre- 
tary of the Navy in the Cabinet of Martin Van 
Buren. Two years later, urged by his friends 
and a personal letter of Daniel Webster, he ac- 
cepts the appointment of minister to Spain. 
He spends fours year at Madrid in the midst of 
revolution and insurrection; is summoned to 
London to assist in the settlement of the Or- 
egon claims; returns to Sunnyside, builds a 
new tower to the cottage, and recommences the 
"Life of Washington." He is now seventy 
years of age, but we find him on his old familiar 
trips to Baltimore and in the library of Wash- 
ington, looking up material for his history; 
for it was characteristic of the man, even to the 
close of his life, whatever he did to do it ac- 
curately and well. 

He spends a portion of the following summer 
at Saratoga and Niagara, and his trip through 
the lakes calls up his first visit to the St. Law- 
rence and the memories of his early life. A 
letter written at this time to a niece in Paris 
shows the wonderful changes of fifty years, 

160 



presenting a contrast almost as effective and dra- 
matic as the long absence of his sleeping hero. 
It seemed necessary and fitting for the travel- 
ler through many lands to come back again to 
this point of his early wandering in order to 
complete the cycle of his life. "One of the 
most interesting circumstances of my tour," he 
writes, "was the sojourn of a day at Odgens- 
burg. I had not been there since I visited it 
in 1803, when I was but twenty years of age. 
All the country then was a wilderness. We 
floated down the Black River in a scow; we 
toiled through forests in wagons drawn by 
oxen; we slept in hunters' cabins, and were 
once four-and-twenty hours without food. 
Well, here I was again after a lapse of fifty 
years. I found a populous city occupying 
both banks of the Oswegatchie, connected by 
bridges. It was the Ogdensburg of which a 
village plot had been planned at the time of our 
visits. I sought the old French fort where we 
had been quartered: not a trace of it was left. 
I sat under a tree on the site and looked round 
upon what I had known as a wilderness, now 
teeming with life, crowded with habitations. 
I walked to the point where I used to launch 
forth in a canoe with the daughters of Mr. 
Ogden and Mr. Hoffman. It was now a bus- 
tling landing-place for steamers. There were 

161 



still some rocks where I used to sit of an even- 
ing and accompany with my flute one of the 
ladies who sang. I sat for a long time sum- 
moning recollections of by-gone days and of 
the happy beings by whom I was then sur- 
rounded. All had passed away! All were 
dead and gone! Of that young and joyous 
party I was the sole survivor. They had all 
lived quietly at home, out of the reach of mis- 
echance, yet had gone down to their graves, while 
I, who had been wandering about the world, 
exposed to all hazards by sea and land, was yet 
alive. I have often, in my shifting about the 
world, come upon the traces of former exis- 
tence, but I do not think anything has made a 
stronger impression upon me than this my 
second visit to the banks of the Oswegatchie." 
To come back again after the lapse of a cen- 
tury to the memory and traces of his early life 
seems indeed like the fulfilment of Tennyson's 
dream in the "Sleeping Beauty," and we won- 
der if the retrospect from this lone standpoint 
of three score years and ten fulfilled the dreams 
of the youth of twenty. Perhaps so! for it 
was the good fortune of Irving to realize his 
visions, and in this particular he stands alone 
in the field of letters. Unlike the most of us, 
his "castles in Spain" were of genuine marble, 
and he lived to walk beneath their turrets and 

162 



to know the richness of his inheritance. On 
one of his last visits to London he was domiciled 
with a friend in a cloister of Westminster Ab- 
bey, and in one of his midnight reveries he 
writes to his sister: "How strange it seems to 
me that I should thus be nestled quietly in the 
very heart of the old pile that used to be the 
scene of my half-romantic, half-meditative 
haunts. It is like my sojourn in the halls of 
the Alhambra. Am I always to have my 
dreams turned into realities?" 

Singularly enough, even Sunnyside itself is 
fore-shadowed in his "Legend of Sleepy Hol- 
low," written in his thirty-sixth year, and the 
reader of the "Sketch Book" will remember his 
reference, near the beginning of the essay, to a 
little valley near Tarrytown, one of the quiet- 
est places in the whole world; and he says, 
"If ever I should wish for a retreat whither I 
might steal from the world and its distractions 
and dream quietly away the remnant of a 
troubled life, I know of none more promising 
than this little valley." Twenty-three years 
afterward he writes to his brother from Spain: 
"I hope some day or other to sleep my last 
sleep in this favorite resort of my boyhood;" 
and when the long procession wound its way 
from Sunnyside through quiet Irvington and 
Tarrytown among scenes which had found new 

163 



charm in Irving's life, across the old bridge 
draped with mourning, past the Dutch church 
with its hallowed memories of two hundred 
years, to the peaceful valley of Sleepy Hollow, 
it seemed not so much a mourning procession as 
a poetic pilgrimage — as if his dreams were 
realized in his last sleep ; as if there were a kin- 
dred sympathy in the words "dust to dust," 
and that the land he had filled with his legends 
was only receiving him to his own. It was one 
of those warm November days which seem to 
belong to the Hudson Valley, as mild and gen- 
tle as the spring-time, and the broad river, 
every point of which is punctuated with ex- 
clamations of beauty, lay tranquil as the heart 
of the gentle writer, as if it, too, missed a friend 
and companion ; for 

"They do not err 
Who say that when a poet dies 

Mute Nature mourns her worshiper 
And celebrates his obsequies." 



164 



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